


patching up

by melforbes



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tess Lives, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:53:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 144,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24827122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melforbes/pseuds/melforbes
Summary: In Jackson, Tess stitches up one of Joel's injuries.
Relationships: Joel/Tess (The Last of Us)
Comments: 58
Kudos: 268





	1. Patching Up

**Author's Note:**

> for context, this was supposed to be a oneshot. oops!

“Explain it again.”

Joel sighed as he sat down at the kitchen table in his house in Jackson, Tess lighting the stove and putting a pot of water on. At least now she wouldn’t have to pour shitty whiskey on his wounds, then use the same needle she used to patch his gloves in order to stitch him up, like she had in Boston. 

“I told you already,” he said, wincing with the pain. 

When an infected pushed him back during his patrol with Tommy, he rammed into a stuck-out pole, and the metal thing had been sharp enough to go through his shoulder. Of course, Tommy called off the rest of the patrol, dragged Joel from the house on their route back to the horses, carried him home on horseback. He’d bled enough to put steaming red patches in the snow.

“And I don’t believe that story.” 

Tess dropped scissors and needles into the pot as the water boiled. Ever since they’d come to Jackson, Tess had been vying for a patrol route, and though Tommy trusted her enough from their days together in Boston, Maria needed more convincing. Still, she knit Tess a sweater, black with a white Fair Isle yoke, the yarn scratchy but warm for a Wyoming winter. Tess wore that sweater today, probably in hope that Maria would trust her more, along with a black turtleneck to cover up the bitemark.

Sighing again, he insisted, “I swear to you, it was just something stupid.”

“It would be a shame if _something stupid_ got you killed.”

She drained the pot, left the sterilized tools on a clean cloth on the kitchen table. Long ago, they’d run out of gloves. As she pulled up a chair, peeled away his bloody clothes, he remembered the last time she did this, then the time before that, then the time before that. At this point, he couldn’t recall which of his scars she hadn’t stitched. Though he’d once tried to reciprocate, she’d grown so frustrated with his stitching - his hands were too big and shaky, and he kept closing his eyes whenever he broke skin with the needle - that she pushed him off of her and took over, tugging the stitches tight and only wincing a little.

“It’s not gonna be something stupid,” he said, wincing as she swabbed alcohol over his bare skin, his still seeping wound, “‘cause you’re gonna be the one to kill me.”

She smirked, Kubrick stare, then brought the threaded needle to his skin, ignored him as he flinched at the contact. Though he knew he ought to be accustomed to this kind of pain, living in a house with electricity and a place to bathe had made him go soft. Now, he sometimes overslept in the morning, curled up next to Tess in bed because the fire had gone out hours beforehand and they were both cold, and Tommy would come rapping at the door, shouting up to Joel that they needed to _go_ , no breakfast, they were running behind schedule, why wasn’t he up yet? In Boston, he woke with the sunrise, and it was never a pretty sunrise either, but in Jackson, he overslept. In Jackson, he had spare coats, a pair of work gloves, two pairs of shoes so he never dealt with cold toes in winter. And he brought back books from his patrols. Because he knew Eugene would get pissed about anyone ransacking the library he’d taken over, Joel only took books one by one, rearranging the shelves to look as though they’d never been touched. Though he wasn’t one for reading, Tess always bloomed when he brought her a new book, and he’d even made the delightful mistake of thinking she would enjoy a book on carving, only to find that she didn’t and that he, in fact, did. He didn’t know much about feelings or communities or what it meant to be human, but he watched as they went from living cramped at Tommy’s to having this house, then turned this house into a home, and wondered how he’d gotten by in Boston at all. _You hadn’t been happy in Boston,_ he reminded himself as Tess pulled the stitches tight, but there was something more that he felt he'd been missing. There was something about Jackson that a full apartment in the Boston QZ could never rival.

She tied off the stitches, then patted his arm twice, _we’re done here._

“Guess this means I have to make lunch,” she said with resignation as she cleaned off the kitchen table and stood up. 

As the weather turned colder, he'd hollowed out some ground outside, then put up a heavy piece of slate as a makeshift hatch; they could save energy by keeping the fridge unplugged and using that to keep eggs and milk cold instead. Yesterday, Tess managed a whole loaf of bread while Joel went out for patrol; he liked watching her saw a knife through something so inconsequential and unliving. She put on one of his coats hanging by the door, slipped into her boots, and headed out for food, Joel watching through the window as she picked up the heavy slate and reached in for two eggs and some ham. He would kill for a cup of coffee right about now, but at least Tess had gotten the fire burning, the house pleasantly warm around them. He wondered how she could wear a sweater in such heat.

“I don’t think I need to say it,” Tess said from the doorway, shedding his coat and her boots.

He huffed as she returned to the kitchen, put a pan on the stove and left the eggs on the marble counter. He liked these counters, especially when the summer fruits were out and he could count on the cold surfaces to make rolling out pie crusts easy. 

“ _If I’d been out on patrol with you,_ ” he said, mimicking her, “ _then none of this would have happened._ ”

Smirking to herself, she cracked the two eggs into the pan, said, “Exactly.”

“You have to take that up with Maria,” he said, “not me.”

She brought the ham down on the other side of the pan, making the meat sizzle as the eggs cooked.

“Maria doesn’t trust me,” she said indifferently, as if trust weren’t a kind of currency nowadays.

“What makes you think that?”

“I asked her, and she told me.”

He laughed halfheartedly, for only Tess would ask, and only Maria would say such a thing in response.

“Doesn’t trust you but will make you a sweater,” he said as she plated lunch. 

If there was something mundane that Tess truly hated, it was cooking, and admittedly, she wasn’t very good at it, but anything would taste good now, when his stomach was empty, his shoulder achy, and his clothes covered in blood. The most comforting things were always plain and normal, like leaning against his brother atop a horse while they headed home for help, like having lunch set down before him, then a fork, then a knife.

“Enjoy,” she said, bumping his good shoulder jovially and then sitting down with her own lunch, “for this meal might be your last.”

Laughing, he kicked her under the kitchen table, and she kicked him back.


	2. Quiet Places

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love escapism so i think i'll add to this periodically just for fun. not a real wip, the story is probably going to be riddled with holes, it's just sweet and fun because who doesn't need a lil of that. not exactly spoiler free for part 2 but none of this will pertain to things that happen chronologically after the three hour mark stinger, so no spoilers for the ending of part 2.

He plucked at the strings, tuned them as he went. Though Ellie had said she would come by tonight, maybe for a movie, maybe just to talk, she never showed, and when he looked out the window, he could see fat snowflakes falling, a sizable storm, radio signals coming and going with the information, and he assumed she’d wanted to stay home instead. Yes, that made perfect sense. Why go somewhere else during a winter storm? But the snow had only started to fall after Joel and Tess had had dinner, and they’d always kept a spare bed for Ellie, just in case. He wasn’t sure if he should lie to himself or not.

In the living room, he sat with his guitar on the couch, the fire still roaring, the room warm despite the storm. Tess had gone upstairs to dress for bed, but he felt so wired, needed something to ease his mind. Why hadn’t Ellie come by? She’d said she would, and though he could understand a refusal, he'd thought she would keep her word. If she hadn’t wanted to come by, she could’ve said so. He would’ve tried his best not to be offended or upset. In whatever way he could, he would’ve understood. But instead, he and Tess had sat awkwardly on the couch together, looking out the living room windows and wondering where Ellie was. _At home,_ he'd known deep down, but he still held on to a last bit of hope. Looking out the window, he still expected to see her walking down the pathway toward their home, apologizing for her lateness and asking if they had anything for dessert.

He was strumming practice cords, feeling aimless, when Tess came down the stairs, clad in his socks. She always stole his socks. Had she taken to one of his flannels or sweaters, he would have understood - a man only needs one - but she seemed to take all of his newest socks, leaving him the ones with holes in the toes and worn-out heels. And why _his_ socks, when hers were almost identical? They usually traded food for socks with the Mitchells who lived across town, and they knit all socks identically, same fibers, the only difference being the size. If she wanted bigger socks so badly, she could bake them a loaf of bread - or maybe bring them fresh eggs, for Tess could burn almost anything - and ask for a bigger pair. She had options other than stealing his socks.

When she sat down alongside him, their hips flush, he reached forward, said, “Give me those back.”

Quickly, she tucked her feet up under her legs, feigned innocence.

“Get your own,” she said, and he marveled audacity she had to _mean it._

“It’s our only rule,” he said, though they’d never actually established such a thing. “My socks are _mine._ “

“Yeah, ‘course they are.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. Outside, the snow was still coming down in the darkness. In the morning, he knew they might need to cancel patrols, the snow too deep and light for the horses. He hoped at least that Tommy would use the radio instead of forcing everyone to meet up at the stables. Joel wanted to sleep in tomorrow.

“Gonna be lots of snow,” he said, nodding toward the windows. “How did the greenhouses look?”

Joke of the century: Tess worked in _gardening,_ of all possible places. Worst of all, she had plenty to offer other than her fists and keen aim; she could sew, ancient childhood lessons from her mother coming in handy, and she was stronger than most of the stable-hands, could help shoe a horse with ease. Still, she had been brought to the greenhouses first, given the task of tilling and watering, and she’d stayed there ever since, not at all by choice.

“We covered everything,” she gave, sighing against his shoulder. It was getting late, and he felt almost as tired as she did.

“Think patrols might not go out in the morning.”

“Makes sense.”

Reaching out, she slipped the capo to a spot she’d memorized, not knowing how to play but knowing the proper spots for certain songs. 

“Play the one I like,” she said, looking up at him, and he nodded, plucked through the first couple of notes, squinting as he pretended to forget the song. When she knocked his good shoulder, he laughed, of course he wouldn’t forget. After he spent years hearing about how she liked rap and alternative bullshit he would never understand, learning that she loved Buffy Sainte-Marie had been pivotal for their relationship. At least now they could agree on _something._

She liked “Quiet Places” best, and thankfully, he’d managed from listening to tapes to figure out the notes. Because he was too tired to sing along, he kept to the guitar portion of the song, _with the sunlight in your hair and and the ocean in your eyes_ passing through his mind as he fingered the proper notes. She was heavy against his shoulder, tired and wearing a sweater over her pajamas, trying to keep warm. Since she’d had that awful infection in the fall, she always seemed to be cold, wearing an extra layer while he and Ellie didn’t, rationing whatever pills they could manage, taking extra care each time she had to stitch someone’s wounds. They'd been in Nebraska when hunters in a rural area shot at them, and though Joel and Ellie had managed to get out of the fight unscathed, Tess ended up with a bullet graze on her back that only worsened over time, the fever unrelenting as they finally found their way to Jackson. When he fell at the University of Colorado, his first thought after he felt the initial pain of the rod through his stomach was about how she was so many miles away, back with Tommy and Maria, dead or alive depending on what the awful infection chose. Then, he matched her fate, infected with something so arbitrary in a cordyceps-filled world, destined to die without intervention, but he survived. When he and Ellie returned to Jackson, Tess was still alive, and Ellie went to her and hugged her tightly, taking the girl’s mind off of the Fireflies in Utah. He wondered if Ellie had thought that Tess was an omen, a signal that, no matter what she couldn’t remember, everything was right in the world, at least for now. He wondered if Tess had kept Ellie from questioning things.

And Tess had been first with the acid burns. When Tommy and Maria brought them up for Ellie’s bite, Tess had been far more against it than Joel had, then volunteered herself first, _do it to me long before you do it to the girl._ He could still remember the way Tess winced, never screaming, only closing her eyes when the pain came, and it was almost worse to watch her deny the pain, to rise above it, than it would have been to listen to her rage. Tess insisted on waiting for the wounds to heal before anyone went near Ellie, and when they found that the burns had covered up the bitemark adequately, Joel was the one to tell Ellie what they needed to do. Of course, Ellie had fought back, angry and insisting that she could cover the mark instead, tattoo over it, do anything other than burn away her skin, but in their community, there seemed to be no other option. Since then, things had been different between Joel and Ellie, an understandable tension. He’d started to wonder if maybe she was angry about more than the acid burn

When he finished the song, he rested his palm on top of the guitar. For a second, he wondered if Tess had fallen asleep, but she sat up, stretched, sighed with exhaustion. Not asleep yet.

“Do you think she’s okay?” Joel asked. Then, he winced, added, “In the storm.”

“She knows how to keep the stove going.”

Tess’ tone told him that she knew he wasn’t actually worried about Ellie alone in the storm, and that she was too tired to talk about this.

“Do you think she knows?”

Sighing again, Tess said, “You would know if she knew.”

“Would I?”

“It’s late,” she said, palming his shoulder and then standing up. 

In winter, the sun set so early, and he thought that the long nights made her sleepier. Though she’d kept erratic hours in the QZ because of her work, no one slept easily in Boston regardless of who they were, floodlights kept on at night, all that electricity wasted on maintaining an arbitrary kind of safety. All night, they would hear gunshots, and at first he struggled to sleep in Jackson because the town was so painfully quiet. But the quietness eventually faded away, Tess forcing Ellie to help her with canning strawberries in the evenings last summer, building up stores for the rest of the year; he would come home from working with the horses in the heat to hear them laughing as a pot boiled over. They drowned out the rural silence with a crackling fire and guitar music and conversation during the small hours of the night. They made beauty from what once was gunfire. They created something worthwhile.

He knew better than to let her go to bed alone, so he turned off the lights in the living room, headed upstairs with her. While she went to brush her teeth, he put his guitar away, his most recent carving set out on his workbench, Tess’ sparse sewing supplies kept in drawers next to the desk. He’d carried a music stand home with him from one of the patrols, stupid heavy thing, but he loved having one, no more leaning pages against the bookshelves and cursing when they fell. 

Every morning, Tess insisted on making the bed. She’d done that in the QZ too, except back there they had no more than a thin, summer camp kind of mattress and shabby sheets that forced them to wear coats to bed in winter. Now, they had a thick wool blanket for winter nights, a real set of sheets, two pillows with matching pillowcases. Tess had long ago claimed the left side of the bed. Though she thought the plethora of horse paintings in this house was creepy, he liked the one above their bed, thought it gave the house character.

“How much snow do you think we’ll get tonight?” he asked in the dark, Tess curled up alongside him. 

Though some lights in the town stayed on all night for safety purposes, they were far enough from the makeshift downtown area that the light never came through their windows. They could sleep with the curtains open. What a strange thing, after life in the Boston QZ: they finally had curtains but never needed to use them.

“Six inches, maybe,” Tess gave, her tone asking him to please be quiet, only he doubted she would use the word _please._ “A foot at most.”

“Seems like more than that.”

“We’ll see in the morning.”

He wanted to ask her more, to ask about Ellie, to ask if she had seen Ellie that day and talked to the girl, but he knew that Tess didn’t want to talk, so he took a deep breath and refrained. All teenagers were angry sometimes, maybe even most of the time. And the weather had been awful tonight. Had Ellie been a girl twenty years ago, texting her friends at night and insisting on taking him to see awful movies, she would have called to cancel.

“Want a goodnight kiss?” he asked.

Tess nudged him under the covers and said, “Shut up.”


	3. The Stream

“C’mon,” he said at the end of their patrol route, all of the logbooks signed. Of course, Tess had insisted on being the one to sign each, effectively marking her territory. She had spent too long waiting to be approved for paired patrols to let Joel write _all clear_ and sign his own initial. “I have a surprise for you.”

When they left this morning, the sun had barely begun to rise, and they galloped through the growing grasses slowly, their flashlights only so helpful in finding the trails. Now, the sun was up, a few clouds in the sky; spring bloomed the flowers in the fields leading back to the settlement, and Joel motioned for Tess to follow as he turned his horse toward the stream, following the path up toward the waterfall on the ledge. Two days ago, when he and Tommy had to patrol the creek, he insisted that they stop up this way. For half an hour - and Tommy complained all the while - Joel lifted every big rock he could find, dammed a high ledge downstream, crafted a makeshift swimming hole. Though the water was far from still, he took a dip two days ago, and other than the freezing temperature - it was only spring, after all - he found the spot comfortable. He figured Tess would like some space from the settlement, and as the summer months came, he imagined they would have plenty of post-patrol dips in this spot, scrubbing sweat from their brows. It would certainly be easier to wash up here than in a stuffy, insulated house.

Behind him, Tess sighed, pulled the reins on her horse. “This better be good.”

She’d had an easy time with horseback riding; he was lucky enough to learn that, for two summers when she was in her late teens, she’d been a counselor for an equestrian summer camp. He'd called her _horse girl_ until he got a hoof to the stomach. This morning, she met up with the patrol group before he did, her side of the bed cold when he woke, and as he headed into the barn, he found her braiding her assigned horse’s mane. 

At the creek, he slowed down and dismounted, Tess following him as he went. He tied his horse off on a tree branch, then headed toward the spot he’d made, unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it up over his head. 

“Let’s go for a swim,” he said, looking back as she dismounted. 

He pulled the belt out of his pants, shimmied out of them while Tess tied up her horse, huffed at the prospect.

“It’s coming down from the mountains,” she said.

“So?”

“ _So,_ ” she pointed up at the mountains, “they’ve still got snow on their peaks.”

He squinted up at the skyline. 

“Those’re just clouds,” he said, then stepped into the creek, and _damn,_ it was cold, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to wince. He sure as hell wasn’t going to prove her right. “C’mon. Water’s fine.”

“Either one of the teens dragged out all of those rocks,” she pulled off her tank top, then unhooked the holster on her leg, “or you lied to me about your backache.”

Well. “At my age, a back will ache without a reason why.”

“Oh, sure.”

To his surprise, she pulled her sports bra over her head - this one had been a great find, mint condition, she kept going on and on about how back in the day these were so expensive even though they were pretty straps and polyester and little else - and took off her underwear, leaving them in a pile with her pack and guns on the ground. Had he known she would end up skinnydipping, he would’ve packed her a swimsuit.

When she caught him staring, she rolled her eyes, said, “You know how I feel about wet clothes.”

Right. Back in Boston, she would avoid the pathways that required them to be waist-deep in water. Even when she was bandaging a stab wound, she insisted that there was no worse feeling than wearing wet jeans.

“Just admiring the view.”

He waded in waist-deep. 

“Perv,” she said, and then, he dipped under.

* * *

She slicked her wet hair back, treading water in the deepest part of the stream. When she undressed, she even took off her headband, a rare occasion, and now, her hair kept falling awkwardly on her face. Though he could still touch at the deep end, she couldn’t. The day was warm for spring, cool for summer, and he figured they both need to get out of the water soon.

“Maria wants to talk to us about something,” Joel said, tipping his head back in the deep end and looking up at the sky, just enough clouds to keep glares at bay. The garden behind their home must've been delighted. “Tommy brought it up with me yesterday.”

Tess sighed.

“I got off group patrols, alright?” she huffed. “And I’m still helping in the greenhouses. I don’t know what more she could want from me.”

“Not you,” Joel said, purposefully not looking at Tess, “us.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have brought this up.

“We lost a lot of people this winter,” he said, and Tess laughed humorlessly.

“A lot?” she gave, shaking her head. “We lost four, Joel. We lost four a day in the QZ, and that’s just the people they were counting.”

Though she was right, he wished she weren’t.

“It’s different here,” he insisted. “It’s...calmer.”

“Doesn’t mean we’re suddenly different people.”

“We are,” he gave awkwardly, “a little.”

“And does this _something_ Maria wants to talk about prove that we’re different people?”

When Tommy mentioned Maria’s idea, Joel knew Tess would shut it down immediately. At least now she wouldn’t have to control her rage in front of Maria. He sighed, tried to think of which words would lessen the impact, but then again, with Tess there was no skirting around the truth. Had Ellie really been their own, he would’ve thought that the girl had gotten that trait from Tess.

“She had this idea,” he said, sighing, “that maybe you and I could get married this summer.”

To his surprise, Tess laughed.

“Married?” She shook her head, tendrils of her hair moving back and forth in the water. “Absolutely not.”

“It’s really just a glorified party-”

“You know what we could have instead?” Tess asked, laughing again. “A _party._ Just a good old regular party.”

“She thought it might bring the community together.”

“A big dinner brings the community together,” Tess gave, “as did that failure of a hockey match.”

In February, they tried to form four teams for a bracket, but they could only manage three, and the sticks were old pipes or wooden planks. The day ended with more bruises than goals.

“Could be nice,” Joel said, swimming closer to her. “You in a dress.”

“You must be confusing me with someone else.”

She leaned against him so that she could stop treading water, grasped his arms and wrapped her legs around his body. He told himself not to look down.

“Please don’t tell me you’re interested in that,” she said.

He scrunched up his face, gave, “I’m certainly not _un_ interested.”

Nudging his arm, she said, “Sap.”

“You know, people get confused about us,” he said lightheartedly, “and all the time, I have to correct them. And half the time, I don’t even know what to say.”

Tess nodded, suspicious of him.

“So you want a _glorified party_ as an explanation,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Right.”

“It would make things easier.”

“Tell them I’m your patrol partner.” She kissed him quickly, chastely; he wondered if she’d done so only to confuse him. “We should head back.”

She let go of him, climbed out of the stream, and on shore, she brushed water droplets off of her bare skin, winced as she put back on her bra, tank top, wretched jeans. She really hated the feeling of wet clothes.

“So,” she asked as he dressed next to his horse; she mounted her own with practiced ease, her horse camp days coming in handy, “will your wife have breakfast on the table for us when we get home?”

“Funny,” he said, buttoning his shirt.

She took off toward town before he could even mount.


	4. Summer Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only as i was rounding this out did i realize that i essentially copied the dance scene from part 2. whoops! but who cares in the end, it's fanfiction!

“Well, you clean up nice.”

He’d put on his best clothes, the black pants and grey linen shirt he kept for presentations at town meetings. Now that Tess was home, she forced her boots off in the doorway, dirt falling from the shoes; her hands were caked with mud, and he wondered if the tank top she was wearing would ever return to its original color again. The day had been humid, her shirt sticking to her skin, grey clouds overhead; he hoped the heat would break in the night, a loud storm, thunder and lightning and puddles when they woke up.

“Funny,” she said, pulling her top over her head and shimmying out of her pants. She’d learned long ago that intense days in the gardens shouldn’t be brought into the house, so she kept her clothes in a heap, then headed into the kitchen to wash up. “I can meet you over there, if you’d like.”

He wasn’t staring at her ass as she scrubbed her arms in the kitchen sink. Seriously, he wasn’t.

“No, I’ll wait,” he said, then watched the water coming off of her arms turn silty. 

Had Tess agreed, there would have been a wedding, but luckily, Maria had taken to the idea of a _regular party,_ a dance held in the church. That afternoon, Joel had helped open every window, clear the floor, hang up twinkly lights like the ones Ellie kept in her room, illuminate the place with a cascade of little lanterns. Though they lacked refreshments beyond alcohol, and though the music would be played exclusively from vinyl records because Tommy’s boombox had died a piteous death last week, he stood in the church with Tommy and Maria and thought that maybe, just maybe, in this tiny pocket of their middle-of-nowhere settlement, they might be making something memorable. They might be creating good memories.

All scrubbed up, Tess headed upstairs, and he called after her, “Gonna wear a dress tonight?”

“You said it was your turn to wear it,” she called back down the stairs.

And though no one else in the church could tell, he knew that the clean clothes Tess had put on - black jeans and a heathered tee shirt that proclaimed _ski the west_ across the front - only came out on certain days, the closest she could manage to _dressing up._ The last time she’d worn that shirt, she and Joel had been snowed in, no duties for the day, left to curl up together and watch the first of the action movie installments that he scavenged, and the time before that, she’d been holding Ellie’s hand while Maria poured acid over Ellie’s bite. She liked that shirt too much to wear it casually.

As she tipped back whiskey, he could tell that others were noticing the absence of her typical headband. Since arriving at Jackson, she’d started a bit of a collection, her old headband too sacred to wear while gardening and too sparse to wear in the winter. She kept her collection neatly folded in the top dresser-drawer, a wool earwarmer for winter, a breathable cotton headband for gardening. A year into her time in Jackson, Tess had a reputation for headbands, had unintentionally gotten the teenage girls in the settlement to match her look, but the scarf she wore tonight had never been in her rotation. No, this one was made of purple silk and had been a gift from Maria, a luxurious find from years ago that Maria had eventually realized was not her style but was absolutely Tess’s. Though Tess had genuinely thanked Maria for the gift, she hadn’t worn it until tonight, and Joel watched the double-takes, the guys wondering why Tess looked a little different, the teenage girls wondering where to find one _just like that._ He couldn’t help smiling. His tough-as-nails Tess had accidentally set a trend.

“I think everyone likes your scarf,” Joel said, almost laughing.

Tess grimaced, shifted awkwardly, said, “Maria’s scarf, you mean.”

“Alright,” Joel said, “be like that.”

They leaned against the remaining pews, purposefully far from the dance floor. While the rest of the town skipped and twirled to the folk music playing off of the gramophone, Tess and Joel stuck to the back of the room, holding whiskeys and leaning in close to each other, talking softly so that no one else could hear. If they leaned back and looked to their left, they would find Ellie and her friends close to the open front doors, hanging out by a Virgin Mary statue that held a bowl once used for holy water. Cat, Jesse, and Dina, Joel had memorized all of their names, and that morning, when he and Tess returned from patrols, they went to the Tipsy Bison, where Jesse’s parents fed them grits and referred to them as _Ellie’s folks._ They’d never bothered explaining their role in her life in any other way, for they didn’t have a better explanation, two people who shared too much with each other and too little with everyone else.

The song came to its end, the needle lifting up, so someone changed the record, dropped the needle down on a new song. From the first note, Joel recognized the song, upbeat Hank Williams, easy to tap your foot along to; he set his glass down on the pew, then reached for Tess’s hand, tugged her toward the dance floor.

“What are you doing?” she asked, pulling back, whiskey sloshing in her glass. 

“Asking you to dance,” he said, then scrunched his face, added, “or, actually, not asking.”

“Joel.”

He wasn’t going to take _no_ for an answer, so Tess huffed, then tipped back her glass and downed the rest of the whiskey, not wincing, never wincing. Her hand going slack in his, she left her glass behind and let him drag her out onto the floor. 

“Growing up, did you ever have one of those school assemblies?” Joel asked, then brought his hand to the small of her back, making her raise an eyebrow at him. “You know, when they teach you to dance.”

“No,” she gave, and their open hands clasped, and if they didn’t start moving, then they would get in everyone else’s way. “You’re showing your age.”

“At least one of us can lead, then.”

“Oh, you wound me.”

They weren’t good dancers; Tess stayed stiff the whole time, and even as Joel tried to lead, he tripped over the laces of his boots and bumped them into a scowling young couple. Though Joel could manage the rhythm, Tess followed awkwardly, dragged along by him, and when he went to twirl her, she stared at him with a look that said _you must be kidding_. The song ended, and Tess looked relieved until the record changed again, why change it midway through? But someone had put on a slow song, Lucinda Williams, sad but romantic, and Tess closed her eyes in annoyance as Joel tugged her closer, playing the part. 

She liked Lucinda Williams. Here, their tastes intersected, and he’d found out why a few weeks ago, little whispers echoing throughout the house, Tess and Ellie sitting on the porch and eating peaches, and the windows were open, so as he restrung a guitar, he heard Tess tell Ellie that days like that one - hot, so painfully hot, and there was peach juice dripping down her arm, and though the juice was sticky, she was glad to feel something cool on her skin - reminded her of where she grew up, rural North Carolina, her father taught her to shoot because it was family tradition, as it had been with her brothers. Back then, the worst she thought she could do was shoot a deer, and even then, she didn’t trust herself to pull the trigger. Ellie didn’t know a world where killing another person was a crime, where the right to life meant that even heinous criminals would spend their lives locked up and eating three times a day, so she asked Tess about life beforehand, about how calm it must have been. _It was,_ Tess said, laughing, _my biggest concern was whether or not I’d fail my finals._ Back in the QZ, she still had class failure nightmares, would wake up and laugh sometimes because, of all things to fear, why did she fear an F on a piece of paper? When the outbreak had first begun, her first thought had been about the chemistry laboratory report she’d submitted, whether or not it would bring her grade down enough for her to fear for her scholarships. Class cancellations had been a relief more than anything else; she’d slept in for the first time in months when the chaos began, so one morning, she woke in time for a class that never happened, and the next, she woke to screaming.

 _On days like this,_ she told Ellie as they both held half a peach, _my father and I would sit on the porch, listen to the transistor radio, and he would chain-smoke cigarettes, and if a Lucinda Williams song came on, then I would sing along._

Tess relaxed against him. Outside, it had begun to rain, a torrential downpour, the break in humidity that the town desperately needed. Ellie and her friends looked out the open doors, mesmerized by everything but the dance itself.

“I love this song,” Tess said, tone quiet, a secret between them, a totally, awfully benign secret. She spoke those words in the same way she whispered to him about what they were smuggling back in Boston. She spoke those words in the same way she talked to him about what had happened in Salt Lake City.

“Me too,” he said even though he didn’t know what this one was called, had only heard her songs on his drive home from work, his favorite radio station, Johnny Cash with the windows down. Country music had been created with summer in mind. During his first real winter, snow on snow while he and Tommy tried to determine if the cold or the cordyceps would kill them first, he repeated the lyrics to Bob Dylan songs in his head, as if those would warm him up. 

He hadn’t expected a slow song. He wouldn’t have forced her into a slow song, but now, she seemed less reluctant, so he held her there, now feeling as if he were the awkward one, his arm around her back, her palm between his shoulderblades, their open hands clasped together. Leaning forward, she hid her face against his neck, almost nuzzling. He looked down at her, confused. 

“People are staring,” she whispered, and when he looked up and out at the other people in the room, yes, they were staring. Not everyone, not by a longshot, but Jesse’s parents, Maria and Tommy, some of the gardeners Tess worked with, the stable-hands who had watched her touch his ass one too many times, they looked on, and Joel couldn’t begrudge them their stares. When Joel, on Tess’s behalf, turned down Maria’s idea for a wedding, Maria had asked exactly who Tess was, a friend of some kind? A work partner? An extended family member? And though he could label the relationship so simply using words that had gone out of fashion, he found that he didn’t want to put a word to what they had. He’d had a marriage that had been nothing like what he had with Tess. He wasn’t even sure he wanted them to talk about their feelings. But when he woke up in the morning, he would look st her and know that, in whatever way he could be, he was safe, for she filled in his gaps. Their faults were opposites. With Tess, he started to understand why best friends would live together into old age, never seeking romance because what they already had was perfect, but with Tess, he could understand fifty-year marriages, how loving one person meant loving hundreds of personalities as the years went on, how a finicky spark could somehow never go out. None of it felt complicated until he had to put words to the feeling. 

“They’re just confused,” Joel gave. “Probably thought we were related until now.”

She laughed against him, a laugh he could feel. 

“Good thing this wasn’t a wedding, then,” she said.

“Are you ever going to let go of that?”

She scrunched up her face.

“Two more parties,” she said, then emphasized, “ _regular_ parties, and we’ll call it even.”

Outside, lightning struck, and everyone looked to the windows, the open doors, a summer storm. How were the gardens? He would need to ask Tess. Strawberries, peaches, he’d never eaten with the seasons until now. After dinner, she would take the day’s pickings from the fridge, then press a strawberry to his lips, ask if this one was better than yesterday’s. _Personal experiment,_ she would say as he chewed, and when he could speak again, he would smirk, tell her that, months ago, she would’ve sworn she wasn’t a _gardening type,_ and then, she would roll her eyes, say, _just tell me how it tastes, Tex._

Now, no one was looking at them. The song wasn’t even romantic in the end, just slow and sad and using the word _baby_ if only to confuse him, but he was the romantic type anyway, even if he wasn’t very good at proving himself to be. A slow dance didn’t have to be serious. When they went to the Tipsy Bison after a long day, neither of them wanting to cook, they would call the outing _a date_ as a joke, but he’d never really been joking.

“I’ve decided,” she said, laughing awkwardly, “that I hate dances.”

“Really?” he deadpanned.

She met his gaze, a small earnestness in her eyes. Though they’d been in shootouts, been stabbed and beaten, had had their pictures pasted up with _wanted_ written in red text above, never before had he seen her look so anxious.

“I’m not drunk enough for this,” she said.

“We could change that.”

“We better.”

The song was winding down, but it wouldn’t be a proper slow dance if he didn’t lean forward slowly, ask silent permission first, then kiss her, gentle like a schoolboy, as if they’d never kissed before. No Boston, no long trek from Massachusetts to Wyoming, bedrolls close together, they had had to keep watch but hardly needed to worry about Ellie, for if anyone would die on the trip, it would be one of them, not the immune girl they were supposedly protecting. And there wouldn’t have been the days leading up to their arrival in Jackson, Tess’s fever growing worse with every passing day, and though she, as usual, pushed past the pain, pretended she was alright, she stopped pretending a day out from Jackson, needed to rest throughout the day, the wound on her back burning, the infection spreading. He couldn’t sleep that night, hiding in the quietest place they could find, Tess tossing and turning in her sleep, panting, sweating, too warm and too cold simultaneously. He kissed her goodbye in Jackson, his lips on her too-warm forehead. He kissed her because he assumed she would be buried long before he returned to town.

He’d kissed her plenty of times before, but that night, they looked like two people kissing for the first time, tentative, overly cautious and wondering if this was an awful mistake. And because everyone was looking out the windows at the snaps of lightning, no one wondered why they lived together, why they were kissing at all, why he’d dragged her out onto the dance floor, why they stuck together during the slow song. The next morning, they would still be called _Ellie’s folks_ while they ate their breakfast, and Maria and Tommy still wouldn’t understand what they represented to each other. And maybe that was alright, or even better than alright. Maybe they knew something the others had yet to learn. Maybe they were right to protect what they had.

The song ended; he pulled away from her, and to his surprise, he found her blushing.

“I need a drink,” she said, then tugged him back to their pew, his hand still in hers.


	5. Apple Pie

“Here,” she said, hopping down from her perch on the tree and holding a big apple out toward him. They didn’t know the varieties, the orchard just beyond the town’s walls filled with all different-colored apples, and though he could sense a ghost of a flavor, a long-ago memory as he bit down, he couldn’t put his finger on which, maybe a honeycrisp, maybe a fuji. No matter how much time had passed, he could still remember grocery store abundance, five barrels of apples, all different kinds, pick each one up, turn it over in your hand, check for bruises. How strange, that he had worked in a produce section and been sure to hide the bruises, then had been the one turning each apple, undoing all of that work. 

“Fresh as can be,” he said, then took another bite.

They had pie crust in the fridge, all ready to be rolled out. Ellie liked rolling out the dough best. On one of their patrols, they’d found a proper pie dish, one with a scalloped edge and a recipe for pumpkin pie inked on its base, so they wouldn’t have to borrow the neighbors’ anymore. Sometimes, he wondered why they bothered cooking - Tess headed over to a different tree, told him that this one was a good one, then climbed up again, asked him to open up his backpack so she could drop apples in - but the leaves were at peak for the season, a sea of reds and yellows all the way up the mountains, and the day was cool enough to be comfortable, cool enough to bundle up a little. They had time to pick apples and then bake a pie. That morning, they’d had eggs on toast after their patrols, and then, he helped Tess deliver food around the town that afternoon, big baskets and bags of fruits and vegetables, refilled glass bottles of milk, and now, they were picking apples for a pie. Instead of smuggling things into the city - his bag growing heavy with apples, he watched Tess hop down from the tree, then look into his pack and nod in confirmation, they had enough - they were growing things in the town, then distributing those things throughout the town. For a trade deal, Tess was even stitching a cat Halloween costume on behalf of a local mother who would knit her a pair of socks in return. As the world stood today, their way back to normal was blissfully abnormal.

Walking home, he was slow, his pack so heavy, and Tess was talking about how Maria wanted to have a real Halloween next week, with trick-or-treating and everything. Could they make candy apples? She couldn’t think of anything else to give to the children, but she had never made candy apples before, didn’t know which ingredients to use. When they got home after delivering food, they'd showered together because she didn’t feel like heating water twice, and her hair was still wet, tied back in a braid. She’d put on jeans and a sweatshirt they’d found over the summer during a trade deal in Laramie, _University of Wyoming_ in yellow letters on top of dark gray fabric; her braid had soaked the hood darker. With the change in the weather, he’d been able to wear his flannels again but keep his summer boots on a little while longer. She held the front door of their home open for him, motioned for him to head inside while she headed over the shed to get Ellie. The sun was starting to set over the fields beyond Jackson; he took each of Tess’s apples from his pack, then lined them up along the marble countertops in the kitchen. 

He was too sloppy for a pie crust. The last time they all made one together, using peach preserves in winter, five in total so that they could share with the neighbors, he ended up breaking one crust, and they then had an unspoken rule in the house: Joel was not, under any circumstances, to touch the unbaked crusts. But he knew how to cut the apples right, filled a mixing bowl with apple pieces while Tess and Ellie took out the chilled dough, rolled out the base, stretched the dough over their new pie plate. Maple syrup instead of sugar, no cinnamon, they had to make the most of what they had. Years and years ago, Sarah had made fun of how bad he was at Thanksgiving dinner, the turkey raw in the middle and the desserts all store-bought. He didn’t know how to make candy apples, but he knew for a fact that such a recipe was far past his and Tess’s skill levels. Maybe they could convince the children that candy for Halloween had always been a myth, and instead, Halloween was a day for dressing up just because and also, for good measure, listening to their parents.

Though Tess and Ellie had done lattice crusts before, this time they wanted the pie buttery and flaky, so after he poured the apple mixture into the pie dish, they covered the apples with another flat sheet of dough, then scored the top three times to let steam escape, crimped the edges with a fork. Into the oven the pie went, and Ellie spun the tomato-shaped kitchen timer, half an hour, tick, tick, tick. 

While Tess and Ellie washed vegetables for dinner, he picked up smoked brisket in town, coming home right as the oven timer went off. Checking the pie, they all found it golden around the edges, it would need to cool for a few hours before they could have some, but for now, they had spinach and beef, the three of them sitting around the dining table, Tess at the head and Joel and Ellie on either side. Today, Ellie had helped out in the classroom in town, taught the little kids how to hold a pencil and make some basic lines, and Joel asked if Ellie missed school, and she didn’t, not even a little bit, she laughed as she spoke. But Ellie liked to read, he and Tess brought her books whenever they found one that suited her interests - she liked space and science most, but from time to time, she would read a young adult fantasy, then pass it back to Joel and Tess and say that, despite the cover art, this was actually a pretty good read - so he thought she would manage. And an education was most valuable when it helped one understand the world and better themselves, so he figured that the times she visited Tess in the gardens, the horseback-riding she’d done, the chances to teach children valuable skills, were all a kind of education. 

After dinner, Ellie asked Tess when they could cut into the pie, but not for another few hours, give it time. Shortly before they made the first cuts, however, they would whip some cream to put on top, just a whisk and a cold metal bowl, the old-fashioned way. Until then, why don’t they pop in a movie? But Ellie had already seen all the DVDs they had - Joel made a mental note to find more so that this excuse would no longer exist - so maybe a record, or they could sit out on the porch, it was a nice night, they wouldn’t have many more nights like this before the end of the year. Tess said she would bring her sewing, and then, she and Ellie headed onto the porch, and though they asked Joel if he wanted to join, he said no, he was working on something, hope you both have a good night, but he didn’t have anything to work on, nothing at all.

When Tess and Ellie sat on the porch together, he knew better than to join them, even better than to call it _girl talk._ Occasionally, he would overhear bits of their conversations, and his cheeks would grow hot, he shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but sometimes, Ellie said things to Tess that scared him. If he asked Tess about the conversation later, she would shrug the topic off, and all the while, he would wonder why Ellie hadn’t come to him first. Sure, he wasn’t the best with emotions, but Tess wasn’t much better. Sarah had told him about her friends, at least. With Ellie, he would overhear the girl talking about a fight she'd had with Cat, the controversial friend, sixteen and already tattooed. Tess rolled his eyes whenever he mentioned that Cat was a bad influence, but he still overheard Ellie talking about how Cat would say one thing and then do another, and then Ellie would wish that things could go back to normal. They used to sneak into the school room after hours and draw, and once, they found a Bowie tape and put it on the whole time, darkness coming, they couldn’t turn on the lights without giving away their hideout, but there was a full moon that night, and it was magic. Ellie didn’t use that word, _magic,_ but he had been able to mentally fill it in. That night, Tess had been silent for a long time, then asked Ellie if there was more to the story, and Ellie said yes. Tess didn’t ask any more questions.

He couldn’t understand what that meant, _more to the story._ Had the girls gotten in trouble? Sitting in the dining room, staring down at a book he wasn’t reading, he tried to listen to their conversation outside, the windows cracked open for a breeze the house didn’t need, the sounds of leaves rustling and Tess pulling a needle through fabric punctuating the night.

“I don’t know how you do all of this so easily,” Ellie said, and Joel could practically hear her bowing her head, making herself smaller. 

He heard Tess shift, then say, “I can teach you to sew, if you’d like.”

“Not that,” Ellie said. “Everything else. Surviving.”

Peeking up from his book, he saw Tess through the window, the way she stared out at the town, trying and failing to find words. When he returned to Jackson with Ellie, the community took them in, a bizarre kind of acceptance, Tommy’s family was now everyone else’s family; they were stuck in Tommy and Maria’s spare room, Ellie on the couch because she wanted to be. And Tess was alive. Had he mourned her on the way to Salt Lake City? There had been ponds that reminded him of her eyes. She’d always liked being outside, hated the city, loved fresh air and overgrowth and would sometimes slip off her boots in secret, just so that she could touch her feet to moss. Now, she would never need to smell the city again. But when he slept beside her that first night in Jackson, two strange bodies in a guest bed, no obligation but limited space, he watched her breathe and felt his mind go empty. He didn’t have anything left to think. Had they all been saved? He thought he might still have blood beneath his fingernails. The last time he'd slept next to her, she’d been tossing and turning in a sleeping bag, mumbling to herself, feverish and flushed, her breaths hot and fast. The whole night, he stayed up and watched her, unable to calm himself down, unable to look away. After surviving the cordyceps, she would fall victim to an opportunistic infection, something that would have been treated with basic antibiotics only twenty years earlier, something that should never have killed her. She’d survived, only to come close to death again.

But she was alive next to him. She was alive. When she came to him in the night, nestled against him in a way that would have been taboo in the QZ, he never wondered whether or not she liked Jackson. He never thought that she felt anything other than saved. But now, he sat in the dining room and wondered if she’d hated Jackson right then. He wondered if she’d hated still being alive.

“Why’s that on your mind?” Tess asked, dodging the real question. 

“It’s just,” Ellie sighed, “a tough adjustment.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to feeling safe here,” Tess gave. “Not that I’ll never feel safe, but that I’ll never find the safety here comfortable.”

“You go on patrols. You know it’s not all safe.”

“It’s safer than any quarantine zone, that’s for sure.”

“It feels like we’re just in denial of everything,” Ellie said, sounding more distraught but only a little more. With Tess, Ellie measured her emotions, but with Joel, she exploded. Maybe that was why she talked to Tess more, because with Tess she could keep her cool. “We spend our days doing... _whatever._ And yeah, we have to support ourselves, but beyond that, we’re just passing the time. And for what reason? I don’t know what else there is. I don’t know what else to do.”

Tess took a moment to respond, weighing her words, but Joel wondered if she even had an answer to such a question. They’d never talked about it together, what surviving meant, why they had been the ones to make it this far. And he thought of that morning, patrols, the way Tess touched books in the library, reading synopses and putting everything back, no new books today, she would reread an old one this time. In Boston, they had never been still. When they found things, they took them without a second thought, their packs the fullest in the QZ, pills stashed beneath the floorboards, alcohol and rags and morphine and extra cans of food. In 2030, they outran the blizzard that starved and froze ten people. They outran the soldiers who had put them on _wanted_ posters. They outran the many people who wished them dead, so much so that their last morning in the Zone had been spent finishing off a rival. But now, they weren’t running anymore. Now, they had a home, of absolutely all things, and in the morning, they went out for their patrols, and when they returned to town, Tess would go to the gardens, and Joel would help with building and repairs; returning home in the evening, they would make dinner together, maybe watch a movie or read, then go to sleep, the cycle repeating each day. 

Maybe they hadn’t stopped running at all, but now, they were running in circles instead of jagged lines. Maybe, if they stopped running, they would realize that they were only alive because they had done wretched, violent things. Maybe while gardening Tess had brought her dirt-caked palm to her forehead and wiped sweat there just long enough to realize how much pain she’d brought into the world. 

“It’s not easy for me,” Tess gave, and Joel swallowed hard. Maybe he should go upstairs.

“You make it seem like it’s easy,” Ellie said indifferently, just an observation.

Tess brought the needle through the fabric again. A Halloween costume, one measly Halloween costume, and Tess would receive a new pair of socks in exchange. She really did have a problem keeping track of her socks.

“I was only a few years older than you are now when the outbreak began,” Tess gave, pressing the needle through the fabric again, pulling the thread tight. “I never had a chance to live a normal adult life before people started to turn. I was stuck in Boston while the rest of my family was down south, and I had no way to contact them. To this day, I don’t know what happened to my parents or brothers. And in order to survive, I just needed to keep going, whatever that meant. Sometimes, surviving meant forcing people to pity me, and other times, it meant holding knives to their throats. But I managed. Against all odds, I managed.”

She took a deep breath, then continued, “I didn’t have time to figure out who I was, or what I wanted from my life. The funny thing about survival is that you start to forget why you’re fighting in the first place. And when things got easier, once the Zone calmed down and the infection rate dropped, I started getting angry. At myself, at the world, just plain angry. And I found people who felt the same way, and for the most part, that was enough, but it’s not enough anymore. I almost miss it, the anger, because it gave me a reason to keep going, and now that it’s gone, I’m not sure what to do anymore. Without it, I’m nineteen again, and I’m stuck in a FEDRA triage tent, and I don’t know anyone around me. Without it, all I am is afraid.”

He often forgot about how young she was when everything happened. Once, he’d made a joke about mortgages, and her eyes had glazed, and she’d changed the subject, embarrassed to not know the details, to not understand why the joke had been funny.

“But I’ve been trying to do...something else,” Tess said. “To find something new to keep me going. And it’s not easy, I’d never act like it is, but I need to figure it out. Working helps, in whatever form. When I’m delivering food around town, I know that the people I’m feeding don’t care about who I am or anything I’ve done, and I know that, in whatever way, they need me. I think that’s why Maria forced me into the gardens, actually. I think she’s seen my type before, and she knew better than to let me on group patrols and keep me in my element.”

Ellie laughed awkwardly, said, “Promise I won’t tell her you said that.”

“Yeah,” Tess laughed, “you better not.”

They were quiet for a moment, Tess continuing with her sewing while a breeze blew through the windows. Joel hadn’t read a single page in his book yet.

“Do you think they could’ve made a vaccine?” Ellie asked, tone soft. 

Inside the house, Joel winced.

Tess put down her sewing, gave, “I don’t know.”

“Marlene risked a lot for me,” Ellie said, nodding. “I don’t think she would have done that had there not been any hope.”

“I wouldn’t say I ever understood Marlene’s logic,” Tess said, and Joel could tell that she wanted to change the subject. Though Tess could talk her way out of plenty, they all knew she couldn’t talk her way out of this topic with Ellie.

“And Joel said that there were others like me, like us,” Ellie said, “but I’ve never met anyone else like us, you know? There’s no one else here like us, and when we went through Pittsburgh, and Chicago...everyone is still afraid. There has to be something we can do.”

Tess sighed, said, “Sometimes, we can’t do anything, regardless of the circumstances.”

“But we _survived,_ ” Ellie said. “That has to mean something. That has to be important.”

Tess weighed her words, cautious because of the secrets she and Joel shared, cautious because she could hurt this girl so easily.

“I think that part of growing up,” Tess gave, “is knowing that you have the capacity to do something meaningful with your life, then understanding that that impact may never come about, and not because you didn’t try.”

When his high school girlfriend fell pregnant with Sarah, he’d been looking into going to college. He would have been the first in his family to go. Once Sarah was in school, he would talk to her classmates’ parents and say he worked construction for a living and feel small, not because he thought what he did was small but because, had his circumstances been different, he could have done more. Had his circumstances been different, he could’ve been the one paid to design the buildings he helped put together, not the one building them. Though he never once resented his daughter for changing the course of his life, he would lie in bed alone at night and think of his bills and wonder, _could I have made all of this pain go away?_

“That’s...kind of fucked up,” Ellie said, sounding let-down. Of all people who needed to grow up in order to realize they weren’t special, she shouldn’t have been one of them.

“Did I ever tell you about what I was studying before the outbreak?” 

“Science, I think.”

“Chemistry, specifically,” Tess gave. “I hadn’t really narrowed my path down just yet, but I was trying to choose between researching blood cancers or working in immunology.”

“But you weren’t that far into it when the outbreak happened, right?” Ellie asked. “I don’t really know how college works.”

“I was at the beginning of my second year of my undergraduate degree when it happened,” Tess said, nodding. “So, I knew a little more than most, but I hardly knew anything at all.”

“Kind of sad, if you think about it,” Ellie gave. “Had it all happened a couple years later, you might’ve been one of the people finding a cure.”

“But it didn’t,” Tess gave, sounding both resigned and upbeat simultaneously. She could laugh it off, but only because she’d learned to accept that she couldn’t change the past. “And I think I’ll always wonder what would happen if things had been different. If I’d graduated high school early, if I’d been recruited for research, if the infection hadn’t mutated for another few years. But that story isn’t mine. No, this one is. And maybe my life is small, and I don’t know how to live with all that got me here, but I can feed my community. And I can sew a Halloween costume, for fuck’s sake.”

“It feels so small in comparison, though,” Ellie gave, unconvinced. 

“But it has to be enough,” Tess said with conviction. “I have no option other than for it to be enough.”

Ellie let that stew for a moment, then said, “Okay.”

* * *

When they woke the next morning, Joel could see his breath.

“Freezing,” Tess said as she turned off the alarm, stretched out in bed.

First light, they would be late if they took too long getting up, but he didn’t want to get up, so he reached out for her in bed, tugged her closer.

“Stop,” she said, tone soft and meaning the opposite of what she’d said; she let him take her into his arms, then wrapped her own around his waist, enjoying his warmth. “We’re gonna be late.”

“It’s cold,” he said, lips against her hair. “Everyone’s gonna be late.”

“Did you do the wash?”

He winced. 

“You had the morning off," she said, "and all I asked was that you do the laundry. And then-”

“Fine, fine,” he pulled away from her, sat up in bed, smirked, _be that way._ “We’re gonna be late.”

She put on the black sweater Maria had made for her, lifting the sleeve to her nose and sniffing. Really, he’d meant to do the laundry, but then he thought about something else and forgot. Her usual olive-colored barn jacket, leather gloves, his socks which he would let her wear this time and this time only in honor of the forgotten laundry, she always spent the most time in the morning choosing which headband to wear, and because today was cold but not frigid, still October, she went for sporty merino wool that could cover her ears. Though Tess let underwear and socks sit haphazardly in one specific drawer, she folded all of her headbands, then organized them by weight, the lightest on the left and the heaviest on the right. 

“I like when you wear leather,” she said as he pulled his own jacket on, maybe too warm for the day, he might regret this later.

Smirking, he said, “Sure you do.”

They headed downstairs, packs on their backs, and at the base of the stairs, Tess stopped short in front of him, held him back while she peered into the living room.

“What’re you-”

She held up a finger, telling him to be quiet, then motioned for him to come look. On the couch, Ellie lay, curled up and asleep, facing toward the cushions. After they'd had pie the night beforehand, Ellie had gone back to the shed for the evening, hugging them both on the porch before heading home. When had she come in here last night? Was there something wrong with the shed? He met Tess’s gaze and could see that she was asking the same questions. She nodded once, so he cautiously went into the laundry room, where he found, along with all of the laundry he hadn’t done, a spare blanket. Once, at the Tipsy Bison in the summer, Tess had nodded to him when her drink was empty, so he asked for a refill on her behalf, and one of their neighbors commented on how odd that was, but to them, the silent understanding felt innate, something they’d both had within them long before they met each other. In the living room, he gently tucked Ellie in, then cautiously backed away while Tess headed for the front door.

Walking down the porch-steps, Tess asked, “Do you think she was scared?”

He furrowed his brow, asked, “About what?”

Though the day had grown brighter since they’d woken up, he could still see his breath, and Tess was making fists inside the widest part of her gloves, fingers cold. 

“How much of our conversation did you hear last night?” Tess asked. When he tried to look innocent, she huffed, added, “You’re bad at eavesdropping.”

He’d never been able to lie to Tess, not ever. 

“Do you think-”

“ _I_ know you listen too loudly,” Tess gave, “but I don’t know if she knows. How much did you hear?”

He sighed, breath like smoke in front of his face. “Most of it.”

“Well.”

The little strings of bulbs were being lit around town, the greenhouses brightening as they walked by, sunrise on the distant mountains, Jackson waking up. He liked living around people who weren’t afraid of him, and he especially liked when the gardeners would smile and wave to Tess and force her to awkwardly smile and wave back. When they reached one house, Tess touched his arm gently, then walked up the front steps while he crossed his arms and waited. She knocked twice, then went into her pack and pulled out the folded-up Halloween costume she’d sewn, a black cat costume, at least black fabric wasn’t too hard to find. The mother of the child who would wear that costume opened the door, then brightened when she saw what Tess held out to her, _thank you so much, this is so lovely, and so prompt! I’ll have the socks for you by the end of the week. Oh, how about a pair for your husband as well? We just sheared the sheep, and I’m dying to spin. Really, you both would be doing me a favor._

The front door closed, the task done, they started walking toward the stables again. Though there would be a pair of so-called _husband socks_ in their possession, he knew that Tess would keep those for herself. Or maybe she liked stealing his socks and would give him the spare pair only to take them back whenever she pleased.

“Do you think she’s okay?” he asked, the stables within view. He was starting to think the day wouldn’t get any warmer. 

Sighing, Tess said, “I think she’s feeling what anyone in her position would feel.”

“But is she alright?”

Tess gave him a look, then said, “You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

The stable-hands all knew Tess well, knew she could hold her own and let her saddle the horses they took on patrol. Their horses had adjoining stables, a halfhearted joke in the patrols, _they’re stuck together;_ Tess saddled Winne first, his horse, old girl, he’d fallen off of a younger horse and been forced onto Old Steady instead. Usually, Tess would chat with Winnie or with him while tacking, talking about what she was doing, petting the horse and asking how her morning had been, telling him that she missed English saddles though he didn’t know how saddles could be different. She’d mended the saddle pads they used, the aging quilted fabric patched in memorable places like freckles on her wrist. When Tess saddled up Echo, the horse she rode, she needed to touch the horse while she went through her tasks, talk to the horse, communicate what she was doing even though the horse couldn’t understand her. Echo had been too young and nervous for most to ride, but once Tess was on paired patrols, once the stable-hands knew she was capable, they had her ride Echo on an easier route, and so far, no one else had had such luck with the horse. _It’s only me keeping you from becoming meat,_ Tess joked to the horse as she attached the reins, _so it’s a good thing I like you._

Leading the horses out of the barn, they found Maria and Tommy giving assignments, the other patrols running late because of the weather. Joel would never understand how, in a place with so much snow, a rainy morning or a cold spell made people so groggy. They’d all seen worse, hadn’t they? But for now, he and Tess stood alongside each other, horse reins in their hands, and waited. 

“Tess?” he asked, voice quiet. 

The others were chatting, something about Halloween, a couple of people had stayed up all night in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, someone was gunning for a certain assignment because they’d heard there were still Van Halen records in one of the stores, someone else commented that it was _really fucking cold out._

She hummed a response, glanced at him.

“Are you happy here?”

Though he wasn’t one to ask point-blank questions, he didn’t know how else to ask this one, but then again, what response was he expecting? What if she hated it here? What if she wanted to go back to the QZ, if only because it was the devil she knew? He would never go back there, not ever, or so he thought, for while he watched her think through a response, he wondered just how hard it would be to go back. They could manage the trip, couldn’t they? If Bill was still alive, then they could at least continue smuggling. They could make it work.

“I’m happy here,” she said, meeting his gaze and nodding for confirmation. 

“Is Ellie happy here?”

Tess rolled her eyes. 

“Ask her yourself,” she said, and then, their routes were being assigned.


	6. Ambush (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one got a little long, so i'm splitting it into two chapters

They hadn’t been expecting a snowstorm. Above him, the sky looked thick and grey, he couldn’t find the sun, which direction was south? The flurries burned his eyes, so he blinked them away, lashes wet. If he stayed like this, sprawled on his back in the powder, seeing the mountain peaks in his peripheries, his clothes would soak through, and he’d ride home cold. 

Riding home. Where was the horse? Blood melted snow; he was starting to see steam. Hearing something, he tried and failed to turn his head, but the sound felt distant, reverberated, as if he were underwater. Contact with his right arm, he winced and tried to look, but it was Tess, just Tess, and then, she was leaning over him, on her knees and looking down, saying something, his name, yes, his name. _Joel. Joel. Joel._

Her hand was on his cheek. He’d killed the rabbit that she’d eventually turned into those mittens. Though she was talking to him, he couldn’t understand her; she took his shoulders in her hands and shook him, speaking more forcefully, asking him for something. For what? Snowflakes were sticking in her hair as if they were little stars.

Her nose was bleeding, the blood dripping onto his face and making him wince. When she tried to help him up, he saw the gash on her thigh, her jeans ripped, blood thick through the denim. His arm draped over her shoulder, his body weight against her, she led him to the horse, just one horse, where was the other horse? His boots felt as if they were full of lead. Could he walk? He was walking, or maybe Tess was dragging him, and though he could barely hear her, he knew that she was talking because he felt the way her stomach moved.

Then, his chest was over the horse’s neck; he was being tied on, ropes around his body. When the horse started to trot, the jostling hurt his head, and suddenly, everything went dark.

* * *

The house was cold. Had Tess put more wood in the fire? He wanted to go back to sleep, but he could never sleep if the house was too cold. Once, in the very heart of last winter, he’d grown frustrated with the upstairs bedroom and dragged their mattress into the living room, pushing the couch aside, making them sleep close to the fire. Or, at least, they slept after they had sex, and suddenly, all of those luxury condos he’d help build before the outbreak, ridiculous fireplaces in Texas, started to make sense.

“Hold on. He’s coming to.”

What was Maria doing in their bedroom? She loomed above him while he rested on the bed, her coat marred with blood, her hair tucked behind her ears. Reaching down, she touched his forehead, and he flinched at the contact. Had Maria ever touched him before? She looked away from him, took her hand back.

“You might want to cover up,” Maria said.

He followed Maria’s gaze, and there, he found Tess in the armchair by the window, her reading nook, his place to listen to records and wind down for the evening. First, he noticed that she wasn’t wearing a top, and second, he saw that her face was swelling, her hair tied back in an awkward bun and her left eye struggling to open. Bruised, she was bruised, a white circle surrounded by awful purple on her chest, bluish marks staining her face. At least her nose wasn’t bleeding anymore.

“Nothing he hasn’t seen before,” Tess gave, voice gravelly. 

Maria blinked with disbelief, a silent _excuse me?_ Somehow, they could still surprise her, and he could tell that that annoyed Tess.

“He couldn’t hear me before,” Tess added, “or at least he didn’t react to what I was saying.”

Maria glanced back at him, then to Tess again.

“Were the gunshots close?” she asked.

“Very.” 

“I can hear you,” Joel choked out, and then, the pain started to come.

His head, that was the worst, but his legs ached as if he’d walked too far. The spots where Tess had bruises, those felt fine on him, but his head, his _head,_ the throbbing almost made a sound, one disconcertingly loud. Closing his eyes in bed, he tried to brace against the sound, but it was no use. With every heartbeat, his head pounded, each pound making him feel as if he were being beaten.

Then, Maria pinched open one of his eyes, shone a flashlight toward him, stared down intensely. Though he’d gotten to know her more since his first time in Jackson, he found that he was still scared of her.

“Pupils are dilated, but they’re the same size,” Maria gave, then put the flashlight back into the pocket of her coat. “Definitely concussed. How many times was he sick?”

“Twice,” Tess said from across the room. “Once right after, and then another time halfway home.”

“Where else was he hit?”

“He went down pretty early on,” Tess gave. “Think they thought he was dead.”

“Is that your way of saying you took the brunt of the beating?”

Oh, Tess wouldn’t like that tone at all, he knew that for certain.

“He’s got no secrets like that,” Tess taunted. “Have a look for yourself.”

Pulling the blanket over him down, Maria looked over Joel’s chest, palpated his ribs, no breaks, no real contact. What had happened? He couldn’t remember much, nothing but Tess above him, the snowstorm, the blood dripping from her nose, the rabbit fur mittens. She’d touched his face and said his name, then tied him to the horse. Where had they been? A snowy mountain, or a hill, and steam rose because hot blood melts snow. Patrols? No, he had been on patrols with Tommy, or he’d been on patrols with Tommy last week. Tired of working with the farm animals, Ellie had begged Maria to go out for group patrols, and Tess had wanted to join the group, play it off as searching for supplies in a bigger area. Though Joel would look conspicuous to Ellie on the group patrols, Tess had said that Ellie was excited to see her on the patrol, and during the slower parts of the patrol, Ellie forced Tess to tell stories of smuggling in the quarantine zone, how the Outside made the QZ look like hell on earth. 

So, he’d been patrolling with Tommy, but why had Tess been there? One horse, they’d only had one horse, and she’d tied him to the horse’s neck. She neck-reined, refused to use a bit, so how had she guided them home? Echo, the finicky horse she insisted upon riding, would never let two people on, especially not if one of them was tied to her neck. 

“What happened?” he asked, the sound of his voice making the pounding in his head worse. Maybe he didn’t want to know.

“We got jumped,” Tess said while Maria reached beneath the blanket, and, oh, he was naked. No, not naked, still in his underwear, but the rest of him was naked, and he didn’t like his brother’s wife poking around down there, even if she was far from his nether regions. “Couldn’t tell if the group was infected or not. Echo ran off, and you got your head smashed in.”

“For someone who came to town looking like a ghost, you’re in pretty good shape,” Maria said, then walked back over to Tess. “You know the drill. No bright lights, no TV, no reading, and only soft music.”

“Great,” Joel managed while Maria went through the same motions on Tess, palms against ribs, right where there were bruises. 

He had seen Tess in pain before. He had watched her nurse injuries in the QZ, pretend she was fine only to walk five miles on three broken toes, stitch up an injury on the Outside because she’d let down her guard for a moment, wince as fever took her over. When she’d been bitten, he’d watched the pain of her circumstances overtake her, the inevitability that never came, the waiting that terrified her. As Maria poured acid over the bitemark, he’d watched while Tess took the pain, rose above the feeling, refused to give in, but now, Maria crouched alongside the armchair and touched Tess’s chest gently, and Tess hissed with pain, body going rigid, _that hurts._ Maria swallowed hard, then rubbed her thumb across that same spot, the lightest of touches, and all the while, Tess held her breath.

“There’s a break, probably more than one,” Maria gave. “Were they punching or kicking you?”

“Punching, mostly,” Tess said, looking tense.

“You’re lucky you didn’t puncture a lung.”

“Well, not every day can be a good day.”

“Do you know what kind of knife they pulled on you?”

“A sharp one,” Tess said, then submitted to being serious, “but it was a slash, nothing deep. Bled a lot, though.”

“Ruined a good pair of jeans.”

“You could patch them up for me.”

“Funny,” Maria gave, then stood up, headed for the closet. “What do you have that buttons?”

Through the window beyond the armchair, Joel could see snow, fat flurries falling quickly, a big storm. Would Maria be able to get home alright? He could taste blood in his mouth.

“One of his flannels,” Tess said, as if such a thing were obvious. 

Rifling through the closet, Maria pulled out the red-checkered flannel, the pair of loose fleece pants Tess slept in on the colder nights. She handed off the folded pile to Tess and didn’t bother bringing Joel clothes.

“Hungry?” Maria asked, helping Tess into the shirt, doing the buttons on Tess’s behalf. “Only soft stuff for now, and nothing hot.”

“A little, yeah,” Tess gave, then stood awkwardly, moving slowly, too slowly. Whoever had done this, they’d laid into her pretty hard. “There’s yogurt in the fridge.”

“Do you have ice?”

“There’re bricks in the freeze.”

“Any pains you’re not telling me about?”

“Please, just bring me some ice.”

Taking her cue to leave, Maria headed downstairs, left them alone together in the bedroom. With Maria gone, Tess walked slowly over to the bed, braced herself with her arms as she sat down at the edge, looked at him tensely. Though he knew she wouldn’t tell him so, she was in a lot of pain, and that pain would stick around for a while.

“Hey, big guy,” she said, gently touching his bare shoulder, a lover’s touch, not at all the way Maria had touched him. “Good to have you back.”

“Where were we?” he asked, whispering so that he wouldn’t aggravate his headache.

“Teton Village,” she gave. “Trade deal.”

“I don’t remember any of it,” he said, meeting her gaze.

She had eyes worth writing about. Hazel, green, brown, he could never really tell which color, but he remembered Sarah’s rock phase, lining her windowsills with pretty stones, rose quartz, fool’s gold, false opal. Tess had eyes like opals. But now, her left eye was swollen, hits taken to the face, and he wouldn’t feel safe until he could see both of her eyes again.

“We headed out at first light,” Tess said, hand warm against him. “We took the horses. When the meeting was set up, we thought we were going out for morphine, some antibiotics. New settlement, abandoned ski village. Maria thought we would make the right impression.”

“I take it that we didn’t,” he said.

“We didn’t,” she gave. “Group of seven men, all armed. They knocked you out, then went for me. Not sure why. On the way back, I started to wonder if they’d all been infected, but they seemed lucid to me.”

“You tied me to the horse,” he said. He could at least remember that part.

“Yeah, and then you puked on her,” Tess said. “You owe her an apology.”

“Echo?”

Tess frowned, the wrong question to ask. If Echo had run off, he ought to know that the horse was gone for good.

“Winnie’s alright,” Tess gave, avoiding his question. “Back at the stables, all washed up.”

“Are those men still with us?”

She closed her eyes, almost looking remorseful. 

“We wouldn’t be alive if they were,” she gave, and then, Maria returned with the ice.

* * *

“Joel?”

He blinked awake, the room dark around him. Hours beforehand, Maria had drawn the curtains, so the bedroom was darker than usual, moonlight kept out. Above him, Maria stood and gently touched his shoulder in order to wake him.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Little past three,” she gave. “Feeling alright?”

“Yeah,” he gave. Or, at least, he had been until Maria had woken him up. After being stuck in bed all day, he struggled to sleep, and the headache that refused to let up didn’t help either. Alongside him, Tess lay on her back, and given how much of a side-sleeper she was, how often she tossed and turned, she definitely wasn’t asleep. “Are you gonna have to do this tomorrow night?”

“Don’t think so,” Maria gave, voice soft. Though he couldn’t understand why anyone would try to conceive nowadays, he still felt for his sister-in-law, how she and Tommy wanted children that they couldn’t seem to have. She had the voice of a mother, and the authority too. “Just need to make sure you didn’t get hit too hard.”

“It’s all relative,” he gave, then glanced over at Tess, who lay so uncharacteristically still. 

So she was avoiding Maria, then. If Joel didn’t like having his sister-in-law in their bedroom, he figured Tess must be fuming.

“Well, you’re alert,” Maria gave. “Off patrols and work for two weeks. Use your time well.”

She headed out of the bedroom, walking downstairs to the couch, her bed for the night. Though Joel hated the every-few-hours wakeup call, he’d been content at dinner, soft foods Maria had brought over for their aching jaws, the fire roaring while neither Joel nor Tess stoked it. If he needed to ask for help, at least the person he was asking knew how best to care for hurt people.

Once Maria was out of earshot, Tess said, “We’re gonna have to burn sage after she heads home.”

Since the afternoon, Tess’s left eye had swollen shut, her jaw looking puffy. Maria changed the bandages on her leg before bed, and when he saw the gash, he winced, a long, puckering wound, superficial but big. Tess breathed so shallowly, the broken ribs making even that small movement hurt. Though he’d lost memories, vomited twice, and passed out, she had taken the brunt of the beating, her whole body wincing through the aftermath, her muscles straining as she lifted him up onto the horse, tied him down. Back in the QZ, they had had Vicodin stashed beneath floorboards for times like these, but in Jackson, they couldn’t drown out the present.

Turning onto his side, facing her, he said, “You haven’t slept at all.”

She sighed, her breath hitching; her ribs needed her to stop moving.

“Not a wink,” she gave.

She’d never been able to sleep on her back, a quirk of hers. Though he could fall asleep in almost any position, fatherhood and hard labor forcing his body to adapt, Tess needed to be on her side no matter where they slept. He’d watched her try to find comfortable positions during their trek across the country, curling up like a cat, turning over at night, never still; as he lay on his back, his stomach, she would stretch into countless positions, trying to relax. Though Maria had been strict with them - only soft foods, no bright lights, no jostling the ribs, no getting up to go to the bathroom without supervision - for good reason, making clear rules so that they could stay safe, he knew that Tess was desperate to break those rules, desperate to turn onto her side and finally fall asleep. With how awful her day had been, he could feel her pain and frustration, the stubborn tears that came with wishing for something so small and having that small thing be out of reach. 

He wanted to hold her but didn’t know how to touch her now. Gently, he rested his arm over her left leg, her good leg, splayed his fingers, light pressure. Her shallow breaths told him that he had been lucky not to remember the fight. Seven men, he couldn’t remember their faces, couldn’t even remember the ride to Teton Village. They’d radioed the settlement there last week; Maria had thought that Tess and Joel could hold their own and appear friendly enough, ex-smugglers partnered for life, a neutral but deadly pair. Though he’d tried to remember, he couldn’t think through more than that morning, Tess and the horses, saddle bags, the saddle bags should’ve meant something to him. And he’d worn a hat that day, a wool toque Maria had given him for Christmas last year, not something he would have worn for a standard patrol. Tess had worn her rabbit fur mittens, the warmest accessory she owned but one she only wore around town because she couldn’t shoot a gun with the mittens on. 

Had she shot the seven men? No, they’d been close to her, close enough to punch her and knife her, and he doubted she would put on a leg holster for that long and mild a journey. They’d had guns in their packs, but those would have been far from reach in a surprise attack. First, they’d knocked Joel unconscious until they assumed he was dead; then, they went at Tess with whatever force they could manage. In his mind, an image, not a memory, formed, seven bodies in a circle, powdery snow, the scent of blood, flurries falling quickly, and his body marred the mandala, cast off in another direction, Winnie at the far edge of the scene. And Tess, Tess alone, the sole survivor of the attack, her boots sinking into the snow, her nose bleeding, a stained knife in her hand. She stood at the edge of the circle, looked down at her victims, and as the adrenaline wore off, she waited for the inevitable pain to come.

Since he’d returned to Jackson with Ellie, he hadn’t killed any non-infected, not a single one. A year and a half, he’d spent a year and a half not killing. Midway through last winter, he’d hesitated before shooting an infected, not knowing the purpose of such a shot, was this person harming anyone in their hideout? But he’d taken a shot, for the safety of himself and others required him to. When he told Tess about the encounter that night, she went quiet for a while, thinking deeply, and he could remember how she looked up at him and told him that she understood.

“The chair,” he said, his chin touching her shoulder. “Couple of pillows, might be more comfortable.”

“Maria said-”

“Sleep on your back, I know,” he gave, “but maybe sitting up will take off some pressure.”

He didn’t want her to get up. In the few times they’d slept apart since moving into this house - they were both too stubborn not to fight, and when foals were born, Tess ended up in the stables, sleeping in one of the empty stalls while he begrudgingly missed her - he’d woken feeling anxious, alone in bed, no one there to watch over him. And neither of them had ever truly been the other’s protector, and she’d never actually _watched over him,_ but knowing she was next to him made him feel safe. She’d never proven that wrong.

“Alright,” Tess said, so he let go of her, moved away so that she had space to get up.

“Do you need help?”

“I’ll manage,” she gave, and then again, he wouldn’t have been much help. Walking to the bathroom made him dizzy enough that he had to lean against walls.

When he woke the next morning, light coming in through the gaps in their curtains, he found her slouching into the armchair, two pillows angled against the cushions, her head lolling to one side. The blanket over her body was one they kept on the downstairs shelves, a movie night kind of blanket, fleecy and warm. A few weeks ago, they’d gotten off of the loan waiting list for the _Titanic_ tape - he’d wanted to convince her that the movie was good - and she’d curled up in that blanket while she insisted that he be the one to put in the second tape, given that this movie had been his pick. Maria must have found Tess asleep when she next woke Joel up, then taken the blanket from downstairs and tucked Tess in.

He wasn’t as dizzy today, could manage the stairs so long as he held onto the railings. Though the headache had calmed to a dull throb, his neck had started to burn, some kind of whiplash, the repetitive strain of having his head forced in drastic directions making him wince. Maria sat on the couch in the living room, the curtains closed, her eyes straining as she knit the next few stitches on a halfway-finished sweater.

When she saw him, she smiled politely, not her mayor smile, something warmer, “Good to see you up. Hungry?”

He took a moment to process what she’d said, and though he could stand now, the dizziness made him anxious, so he sat down alongside her, then managed, “A little.”

Setting down her knitting, she said, “I’ll make you some oatmeal.”

While she cooked for him, he sat awkwardly on the couch. No screens, no reading, no light, no loud sounds. How was he supposed to pass his time? At least yesterday he’d been exhausted and in pain, comfortable with resting all day, but now, he wanted a newspaper to read, or a song to help him through his commute. He knew the house would start to shrink around him if he didn’t have something to do.

And he was unaccustomed to the sounds of cooking paired with pin-drop silence. Whenever Tess made breakfast, she usually complained the whole time, cracked an egg too hard, got shell in the skillet, said _fuck_ and then fished the piece out with a spoon. Maria returned with his breakfast, oats cooked in thick cream, peach preserves spread artfully on top. Though she seemed nonchalant about the plating, he stared down in disbelief, almost insulted that she would take the time to make his breakfast presentable and then act as if she’d done nothing. He missed Tess’s fried eggs with unpredictable yolks, broken or unbroken, and if he commented on the broken yolk - or even blinked too slowly, or made any other indication of even mild acknowledgement - she would huff and say that today wasn’t going to be a good day. He missed her omelets that never hung together.

“I take it she’s still asleep,” Maria said, sitting down alongside him.

He was mystified by the peach preserves. Did Tommy eat like this every day? In comparison, Joel felt as if he and Tess were nineteen and on a ramen noodle diet, but, damn it, he _liked_ their ramen noodle diet. He almost felt rude dipping his spoon into the oatmeal, rude to Maria for marring her creation and rude to Tess for calling his breakfast a _creation_ at all.

“She was up late,” he gave.

The oats were sweet and creamy. Had he made them himself, they wouldn’t have tasted this good, but Tess would’ve taken a spoon from their drawer and had some from his bowl anyway.

“Tommy tried to radio the airport, but he didn’t get a response,” Maria said, and he stilled. Though he’d pieced together the day beforehand from stories he’d been told, he hadn’t thought about the threat they’d faced following them home. “Still don’t know why the group attacked you.”

“They could’ve been infected,” Joel gave. These oats were far better than oats had any business being. “With winter clothes, bites wouldn’t have been as obvious.”

“Tess said she couldn’t see any marks.”

“Did she check the bodies?”

“She said she didn’t have a chance to.”

“Do you think another settlement would set us up?”

Maria furrowed her brow, the wrong question to ask. Because she mediated conflicts in Jackson with such ease, he’d forgotten that there were plenty of problems she couldn’t solve, questions she couldn’t answer.

“My best guess,” she gave, and he could tell that she meant the word _guess,_ “is that they changed their minds, and then, fear took over. Protective instincts. Though they seemed reputable, we’d never traded with them before. Maybe they thought you two were going to hurt them.”

“So they hurt us,” he huffed, spoon scraping the bottom of his bowl. With the headache and dizziness yesterday, he hadn’t eaten much; he relaxed now that he had a full belly again. 

“So they did,” Maria said, hands clasped on her lap.

He didn’t know how to ask his most pressing question, how to seem justified. While Maria thought of ambushes, ammunition and the sharper shooters in town, the pressure the walls could withstand, he thought of something so simple, something just beyond one of his doors.

“What have you told Ellie?” he asked. 

Apparently, he and Tess had made a scene when they returned on horseback, Tess’s voice straining as she announced who they were at the gate, only one horse coming back, Joel tied to the horse’s neck. After half an hour of riding, they desperately needed medical attention, and the stable-hands had crowded around them, two men holding Joel upright, a guard asking Tess if they’d been followed. Word travels fast around town, and while Joel slept upstairs, while Tess sat in the armchair and held ice to her face and ribs, Ellie had pounded incessantly on the front door, forced Maria to explain, in the girl’s words, _what the fuck is going on._ And because Maria didn’t want to disturb Tess and Joel, she’d taken Ellie outside, stood on the porch while snow fell, and gave a general, nonspecific explanation: they’d been attacked, they were both significantly injured, they would both be fine. 

_That doesn’t answer any of my questions,_ Ellie had insisted. _Can I see them? What do you mean, significantly injured? People are saying he was unconscious, and that she was covered in blood. How do you know they’re going to be alright?_

“Sounds about right,” Joel gave.

“I told her she could take the day off,” Maria said. “And I told her she could help with lunch if she wanted to. All of that seemed to perk her up.”

“She really hates farming,” Joel said. “Thinks she can handle patrols, but I’d say she’s too young.”

“I’d say you’re biased,” Maria gave, and, well, he couldn’t argue with that.

Maria had brought cassettes of _The Grapes of Wrath_ over, suitable for him so long as they kept the volume low. While he lay back on the couch, she sat on the window-seat, then fed the fire, then knit some more, then fed the fire again. Though he knew that there must be crises happening around the town, he wondered if she enjoyed this pocket of nothingness, doing basic things for two people who couldn’t. At least now the people she would fight with regarding her rules were too beaten up to fight back.

When she went to turn the tape to the other side, she hesitated, hands hovering over the boombox. 

“You should go check on her,” Maria said, nodding for confirmation. “Bring her ice for the swelling.”

“Do you think she’s awake?” he asked.

“She might be,” Maria gave, smiling awkwardly, “and she’d like to see your face more than she’d like to see mine.”

They’d had ice bricks in their freezer for trade deals, certain medications needing to stay cold. He took what he could carry, held the bricks to his chest while he used his free arm to grip the stair railings. With all of the curtains drawn, the house looked different, a high school hallway at night, the gaps between the curtains telling him that he was wasting this day. He opened the bedroom door slowly, trying not to make a sound; in the armchair, Tess still slept, making up for lost time. 

Had she thought he was dead? The seven men had assumed so, then attacked her with reckless abandon. He could remember her hovering over him, repeating his name, _Joel, Joel, Joel._ What if their roles had been reversed? Staring at her sleeping figure, he imagined a group of armed men bashing her head in, and then, she went limp in the snow, blood dripping from her lips, and before he could take a moment to mourn, someone was slashing at his legs with a knife, and one punch later, his nose was bleeding. Once he’d constructed that circle of bodies in the snow, he would find her in a heap, breathing but seriously injured, and he would nudge her, pat her shoulder, touch his bare hand to her bloody cheek, _Tess, Tess, Tess._ He would spend the long ride back to Jackson with one hand on the reins and the other on her side, making sure she was still breathing.

He didn’t want to wake her up, but he thought she might be afraid if she woke in an empty room. Or maybe she would be upset that he woke her up, but selfishly, he wanted to talk to her. He wanted to hear her voice. If he were to tell her such things, she would roll her eyes, but now, he didn’t care. Closing the door behind him, he didn’t care if she would call him a sap or avoid him, didn’t care if she would feign aloofness and brush him off, for had he been the one to think his partner was dead, he would’ve wanted to see her alive, disconcerting alive, warm and awake in the chair she’d been forced to sleep in, opening her eyes with disdain and groaning that he shouldn’t have woken her up.

Gently, he nudged her shoulder, and she stirred, looked up at him with hooded eyes, somehow wasn’t angry. She looked exhausted in a way that sleep wouldn’t help. Reaching for the ice, she held one brick against her chest and left the other on the side-table, not wanting to calm the swelling around her eye. She pulled one of the pillows out from its spot alongside her in the chair, then motioned for him to sit down, and though they could barely fit together on the chair, though he was afraid of touching her, she managed to relax against him, another pillow propping up her side, her thighs diagonally resting over his. The same blanket, he tucked its edges around them both, then brought his arm over top of the chair, let her rest her head on his shoulder. Though she stayed still against him, this time he knew that she had fallen asleep, her body heavy, all of her energy spent. He wanted to close his eyes but feared he might hurt her if he fell asleep, so he kept them open, stared at the unmade bed, at her book on the bedside table, at the streaks of light coming in through the gaps in the curtains, at the dust that hung in the air. His head still throbbed, but at least he’d gotten some rest, had some breakfast. He wondered how Tess would cope with having Ellie help with lunch.

When he heard the front door open, he was unsure of how much time had passed. He had forgotten how much could happen beyond their walls. Against him, Tess stirred, no more hiding from the day. He gently pulled the ice brick from her chest, then tried to figure out how best to help her up.

“How are you feeling?” he asked as she eased out of the chair.

Even with her eye swollen shut, she gave him a look that told him he already knew.


	7. Ambush (Part II)

“I want to make it clear that, if I could do _absolutely anything else,_ I wouldn’t be doing this.”

“Oh, lighten up.”

Tess looked incredulously at Maria, the queen of needing to lighten up. Together, they sat on the couch, pillows propped behind Tess’s back, _Moby Dick_ droning on from the boombox. They had finished four books so far, and Maria swore that, before they end of the week, they might be able to squeak out this one. In her hands, Maria held four double-pointed knitting needles, four more resting on Tess’s lap. They had a ball of yarn each; Joel had been a makeshift swift, holding his arms out while Maria took the looped skeins and wound them into balls. Sitting in the armchair, listening to the book, Joel felt his arms ache, lack of use. He wondered how Tess could take the time to braid her hair when he found holding his arms up for ten minutes exhausting. Maybe he needed to start lifting weights.

Finally, they’d been able to open the blinds, let the light in. Maria told Tess that sock-knitting was fairly simple, all you needed to do was make a tube, turn the heel, and seam the toe. Tess looked on with disdain, but he could tell that some small part of her did want to learn, if only so that she could trade for a less expensive ball of yarn rather than a pair of hand-knit socks. 

“Back in the day, sock yarns were made with nylon so that the heels wouldn’t wear out,” Maria said as she started looping the yarn, putting it onto the needles. Joel squinted as he watched her work. Though she made it look so easy, he doubted it actually was easy. “Nowadays, we aren’t so lucky, but you know how to darn already. Patch them up, and they’re good as new.”

Tess and Joel had a number of worn-down socks in the back of their drawer, none of which had been patched, but neither of them was going to tell Maria that. 

“I have some notes,” Maria said, taking out her notebook, the same she used for dates and plans. “Just a couple guidelines. Give me a moment.”

“Nice alien drawings,” Tess said.

From where he sat, Joel couldn’t see the contents of the notebook, but he sincerely doubted that Maria would spend her time drawing aliens.

“It’s for the yoke of a sweater,” Maria huffed, embarrassed. “It’s in a grid, see? Just like the sweater I made for you. And stop looking, I don’t want you to get a headache.”

“Why aliens on a sweater?” Tess asked, then distinctly looked away. 

“It’s for Ellie for Christmas,” Maria said, cheeks warming. “Please keep it a secret.”

Tess smiled awkwardly; Joel could tell she was trying not to laugh.

“My lips are sealed,” Tess said, and then, they were back to the knitting lesson.

A week into their recovery, they’d made progress but still couldn’t do much, chained to the couch, listening to audiobooks because they couldn’t read or watch movies. On day four, Joel had been bored out of his mind, so now, even watching Maria teach - or, rather, attempt to teach - Tess how to knit was entertaining. Though Tess had taught Maria how to sew clothes, at least Maria had been a nurse before the outbreak, had already been taught how to stitch wounds; Tess, in contrast, made it through her first row of knitting with a look on her face that reminded him of their long, hot summer days in the QZ, walking from one end of the city to the other in search of buyers. He doubted that she would ever produce one whole sock.

But Ellie came by for lunch, brightening spirits. For most of the week, Ellie had gone straight from her chores to their home, asking if they needed anything, being attentive to the point of annoyance. No, they didn’t need a glass of water, or an extra snack, or some ice. Though Tess was still in pain, they’d managed to live comfortably for the last two days, Tess continuing to sleep in the armchair but Joel no longer having headaches. They couldn’t take their chances with their injuries, but at least he could put a casserole dish, one of many sent over by kind neighbors, into the oven without feeling dizzy afterward. At least Tess had started taking deep breaths again even though they hurt.

While Ellie preheated the oven, Maria excused herself, needed to check up on the town. Ellie asked incessant questions. Were they okay? Were they feeling any better? Did they need anything? When would they go back to work? And the answers were the same every day, they were fine, they would go back to work when Maria said they could, they didn’t need anything. Joel put a dish into the oven; Tess sat down at the dining room table, her body tense, the pain still keeping her from getting comfortable. With lunch served, Ellie went on about her chores. Though she liked the sheep, she was getting sick of mucking stalls, and the patrols were fun, but she stopped herself after using that word, _fun,_ and blushed. No, it wasn’t fun to seek out infected, to see if their home was still as safe as they assumed it to be, but at least she was seeing something new. And she pulled something from her pocket, put it on the table, a looted passport.

“Thought it was cool,” she gave. “Figured that guy’s never gonna need it again.”

Joel had had an American passport. He knew that Tess hadn’t, she’d told him so, been too young and broke to go anywhere special. 

“Kind of weird, if you think about it,” Ellie gave. “Like, it’s one thing to get into a quarantine zone, but weren’t country borders hard to get through? And it’s just a bunch of papers and a picture. It’s next to nothing.”

Joel laughed lightly, gave, “Yeah, it _is_ kind of weird.”

“Do you still have yours?” she asked Joel and Tess, her plate clean, her chores feeling far away. 

Though having Ellie at the house taxed both him and Tess, their exhaustion peaking as she left, she brought a brightness to them that they needed, conversation that kept them from feeling trapped. He did still have his passport, but it was tucked away at Tommy and Maria’s now, along with their passports and the rest of the things Tommy had found in Joel’s old home. Tess had never had a passport, but he knew she kept a little bag of old things in her pack, the bag going with her wherever she went. He’d seen the picture of her family before, had listened to her introduce her brothers and parents to him, and back then, he hadn’t had a picture of Sarah, hadn’t been able to do the same, so he'd pointed to his watch, introduced her that way.

“Joel,” Tess said, “find my pack,” and when he returned with her things, she took out the waterproof bag she kept inside, untied the bag, spread out her things on the kitchen table.

A driver’s license, her real identification card from the QZ as well as her many sets of fake papers, a tattered picture of her family, a pair of earbud headphones that he doubted still worked. She’d kept one of those old dollar coins with Sacagawea on the front, a business card for _Baker & Sons Carpentry_ out of Asheville, her student identification from her university in Boston. She even kept her ration cards. They all knew how useless these things were, old bank cards and keys to a dormitory she would never set foot in again. Had Tess been forced to prove her identity, he doubted an official would accept these documents, instead asking where her birth certificate or the passport she’d never gotten was. But he understood wanting to keep a testament to who she was, a kind of proof that she still existed; he kept his passport and driver’s license for the same reason even though he had FEDRA papers with far more use.

“Do you mind if I take a look?” Ellie asked.

“Go ahead,” Tess said.

Ellie reached for the driver’s license first, smoothed her thumb over the plastic. Tess had been too young for a horizontal license, so hers was vertical, _under 21_ listed until her birthday in 2016, her picture a kind of youthful unflattering, her hair tied back in a long ponytail, her face free of scars, her skin washed out. One of her eyebrows looked crooked.

“How old were you in this?” Ellie asked, pointing to the picture.

“Eighteen,” Tess gave. “I stopped at the DMV right after track practice.”

“What’s the DMV?”

Tess smirked, said, “Count yourself lucky that you don’t know.”

“Why did it matter that you weren’t twenty-one?”

“Back then, you could only drink alcohol if you were over a certain age.”

“Really?” Ellie furrowed her brow, not really believing that that kind of rule had existed. “Alright.”

Tess had been an organ donor, of course she had, science freak. Her middle name was Marie. On her student identification card, she was listed as _Teresa Baker, College of Life Sciences, Sanders Residence,_ and the picture flaunted a haircut not present on the driver’s license, her hair now short and left down, a slight smile on her lips. Her QZ papers didn’t have a photograph included, instead had stamps that claimed she was unfit to work - that one had cost them each 20 cards - and that she lived at an address neither of them had ever been to. The signature on her debit card had faded. Though he knew she’d gone back to her dormitory years after the outbreak, wondering if she could find a way to contact her parents, the majority of her things had been looted, useless clothes taken, only her textbooks left behind, and though she’d brought back a few things, for the most part that room was now empty of her. At least he knew that his old home was empty, Tommy having told him so. He wondered if Tess had ever wished to head down south, see if her childhood bedroom looked the same.

“Why do you keep all of this stuff?” Ellie asked. “I’ve never seen someone keep a credit card.”

“Bank card,” Tess corrected. “My parents wouldn’t let me get a credit card.”

He could tell that both he and Ellie were off-put by Tess ever being an age at which she had been forbidden by her parents to get a credit card. Though he’d always known that the pandemic had begun when she was still a teenager, he hadn’t internalized that fact, hadn’t fully understood that her immaturity had been an obstacle that she'd needed to overcome.

“Still,” Ellie said, “it’s not like the money’ll do you any good.”

“I don’t want to leave a paper trail,” Tess shrugged off. “It’s got my name on it, so it might as well stay mine. And it’s nice to have a version of the past that I can still touch. Then, the memories feel more like memories than fantasies.”

Ellie nodded, half-understanding. He felt the same way as Tess did, but he found that those physical reminders were best kept to the backs of drawers, the memory meant to tarnish over time. He didn’t want to be reminded, but he couldn’t let go either.

“You should see Maria’s passport,” Tess said. “It’s all in Swedish.”

Perking up, Ellie asked, “Really?”

“Dual citizen,” Tess said, nodding. “One in English, another in Swedish.”

“That’s so cool!”

Joel furrowed his brow, asked Tess, “And how do you know that?”

“Girl talk,” Tess gave, an un-explanation, and she smirked a little, as much as her injuries permitted her to do so. He would need to ask again later. 

When Maria returned, Ellie was forced to head back to her chores, but she stalled, asked Maria if all of that about her passport was true, and for once, Maria cracked a smile.

“I’ll teach you a couple words,” Maria said, ushering Ellie out of the house. “Back to your chores.”

Once Ellie was gone, Maria, Joel, and Tess settled back into the living room, the tape in the boombox playing again.

“So,” Maria said, sitting alongside Tess, “did you make any sock progress?”

Joel had to stifle a laugh.

* * *

“A death cult.”

While the other three of them stood around Tommy and Maria’s kitchen table, Tess sat, her back straight against her chair. Joel leaned against the wall while Tess stared incredulously at Maria, disbelieving.

“Well,” Maria gave, a halfway explanation, “I think there’s more nuance to the situation than that-”

“But it’s still a death cult,” Tess said, gaze fixed on Maria. For once, Maria shied away. “How did you learn about this?”

“Radioed a settlement in Idaho.” Maria crossed her arms over her chest, an action she would’ve called impolite had a child done it in front of her. “They’d had a similar experience, trade for medicine gone wrong. They’re recent, whoever these people are, and our best guess is that they migrated from somewhere else and settled in the ski area.”

“How many of the Idaho settlement died taking these guys out?” Tess asked.

She’d exclusively worn Joel’s flannel shirts since the attack, but she’d changed from pajama pants to jeans for today, the gash on her leg healing, the trip out of the house making her want to look presentable. He’d had to help her with the zipper, then the button at the top.

Taking a deep breath, Maria gave, “They sent out a party of four, and only one returned. I didn’t ask about the casualties.”

“What’s the motive?” Tess asked. “What makes you think it’s a cult in the first place?”

Tommy stood at the edge of the room, trying to make himself smaller. He’d never been one for these kinds of meetings, tended to only speak up when Maria got frustrated. And Joel liked watching his brother silently calm her down, one touch to her elbow grounding her. Though he hadn’t understood at first why someone as emotionally volatile and energetic as his brother would have ended up with Maria, he’d seen them at times like this one, two scared people coming together, and knew that they filled in each other’s gaps. Without Tommy, Maria was anxious and overwhelmed, and without Maria, Tommy was aimless and careless; together, they created a kind of balance in their lives.

“The group in Idaho got farther into the ski area than you and Joel did,” Maria said, pulling out a chair and sitting down adjacent to Tess. She folded her hands on the table, knuckles cracking from the cold. “They saw religious iconography and end-of-the-world prose.”

“They weren’t wearing anything suspicious,” Tess said, then eyed Maria’s collarbone, an awkward association. “Not even a cross around their necks.”

Joel furrowed his brow, then cut in, “Are you sure?”

Both Tess and Maria looked up at him, Tommy following close behind. Throughout their meeting, Joel had kept quiet, so even asking a basic question made him feel as if he were speaking out-of-term. 

“I’m sure,” Tess gave, then looked away from him.

“They attacked you,” Joel pressed, unable to make sense of what she’d said. “You didn’t have time to-”

“She said she’s sure,” Maria forced, and with that, he knew that this line of inquiry was over. 

Did Maria know more than he did? Yes, of course she did, but had Tess told Maria more than she’d told him? But the way Maria looked made him think that Maria was defending Tess blindly, ending the conversation there, believing Tess but also not wanting to start a fight. Had he ever seen Maria believe something without proof?

“What do we do now?” Tess asked.

She sounded tired. Her chest must have hurt, the walk here longer than expected because they’d needed to take breaks. Though Joel had asked Maria if they could all meet at Joel’s and Tess’s instead, Maria had said that a walk would be good for them both, and Tess had perked up for a while, glad to move again, but now looked exhausted. He wondered how she would be on the walk home.

“Same as always,” Maria shrugged off. “Stay up-to-date, communicate with trusted settlements, reinforce our borders. Send out spare lookouts, if need be.”

“And that’s it?”

“Do you have any other ideas?”

Caught off-guard, Tess awkwardly said, “No.”

“Tried and true,” Maria gave, standing up. “Now we know better. Won’t happen again.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“No,” Maria said, gently touching Tess’s shoulder. “I can’t.”

On the walk home, they ended up sitting down on the Mitchells’ porch-steps, taking a break while Tess caught her breath. Though she seemed convinced that she could make it home without another break, he stopped her by the gardens, prompted her to check in with everyone there, forced her to slow down. There were benches there; they sat down while one of the men Tess worked with told her about how the plants were doing, some berries from one of her projects managing to sprout. Berries in winter? She’d had certain ideas about salinity, steam, and greenhouse construction. _A crapshoot,_ her words, but they’d sprouted. The man came back with a little handful, fresh raspberries in winter. She brought one to her mouth, then chewed slowly, her jaw still in pain.

At home, she wanted to rest, so he set out comfortable pants for her, fluffed the pillows on the armchair she still slept in. She managed to dress on her own, then let him help her settle into the chair, pillows angled to support her chest, blankets tucked around her legs.

“Want some ice?” he asked once she was bundled up.

“No,” she said, so he nodded, then paused, unsure of what to do next. Against his better judgment, he leaned down to kiss her forehead, and he assumed that she didn’t react because she was tired.

He closed the curtains, then went to leave the room when she said, “Joel?”

Turning around to face her, he hummed a response, waited for her to speak.

“This should remain private,” she said, tone even, uncomfortably serious, “but I checked all of the bodies.”

He furrowed his brow, asked, “For what?”

“Bites,” she gave, looking embarrassed. “And I don’t want anyone else knowing.”

“Why not?” he asked. “Were they infected?”

“No, they weren’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Joel,” she said, sounding defeated, “I checked all of the bodies, head to toe. None of them were infected.”

“And no crosses?” he asked, needing the confirmation. “No necklaces, no bracelets, no tattoos, no-”

“None of that,” she said. “Nothing noteworthy at all.”

He paused, tried to process what she’d said, then asked, “When did you check them?”

She looked down at her lap, said, “After I made sure you were alive.”

“What did you expect to find?”

“I didn’t expect to find anything,” she gave. “I thought...I hoped that looking would help me understand.”

“But it didn’t,” he said.

She met his gaze, swallowed uncomfortably.

“No, it didn’t.”

She’d had broken ribs as she checked those men for bites. Every breath of hers had come at a cost. She had searched for something to give their deaths meaning and found nothing. Would they have been buried with honor in a religious cult? Maybe Tess had brought them to the fate they’d dreamed of, but she hadn’t seen their fate as beautiful. No, she’d looked for reasons why she wasn’t a true killer and found none. She’d checked every single one of the bodies and come to the conclusion that she’d killed seven lucid people, all of whom could have lived beyond that day. She’d checked and then wished she hadn’t.

“I don’t want anyone else to know,” she said, still holding his gaze.

She wanted to preserve that possibility for everyone else. She wanted everyone else to think that maybe they should check the bodies.

He nodded to her, said, “Okay.”

* * *

“Joel,” Tess said from the armchair, voice husky with sleep, “please make them stop knocking.” 

He blinked awake in bed, wasn’t sure what she meant until he heard loud knocks on the front door, someone calling his name, then hers. Stretching his arms, he ached out of bed that morning, squinted against the daylight. Tess’s eyes were still closed, and she rested awkwardly in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position, trying to keep pressure off of her chest. She looked so small. Bundled into her little corner, blankets tucked around her, she looked so small, and he wanted to curl up next to her, the two of them taking up space. But he settled for a forehead kiss that she groaned against, and he smiled against her skin. He liked when she was sleepy.

Downstairs, the person at the door kept knocking; when he opened up, he found one of the stablehands waiting, a nice young man named Victor, someone who goaded Tess and made her smile. He’d taught Joel how to neck-rein, and he and Tess had shoed horses together, Victor acting as the muscle of the operation while Tess soothed. He liked her enough that Joel had wondered about a crush, but in the fall, Victor had asked Tess what she liked to be given, you know, as a girl, and Tess had smiled, asked if there was someone special, and Victor had blushed bright red. There had been someone special, a girl in town who was his age, and Tess and Joel had watched from afar as he gave this girl flowers for the first time, then both offered distant thumbs up for the effort. 

“Hey, Joel,” Victor said, rubbing his hands together to keep them warm. “Sorry to barge in so early.”

“It’s all relative,” Joel gave, but, really, he wished Victor would go away.

“Is Tess awake?”

“Not yet,” Joel said. “Is something wrong?”

“No, actually,” Victor said. “But a paired patrol came back. They found Echo. She’s a little overwhelmed and needs some care, but she’s alright.”

Joel raised his eyebrows. 

“Tess’s horse?” he asked, too sleepy to process the information. “She came back?”

“Kind of had to be dragged back,” Victor said, laughing lightly. “And she’s wary of all of us, as usual, so we were wondering if Tess might be around to help.”

“Victor, she’s-”

“I know, I know,” he said, a little let-down. “But she wouldn’t be alone. We wouldn’t let her be harmed. Even just having her talk near the stall might help. Or maybe one of her shirts, a familiar smell, something like that. Anything to help Echo chill out.”

“I can grab one of her shirts,” Joel said, glancing back at the stairs. “Give me a moment.”

Victor brightened. 

“Thanks, man,” he said. “Means a lot.”

Though he tried to be quiet as he walked up the stairs, as he snuck into their shared closet, he knew that Tess was awake, her eyes closed in protest but sleep escaping her nonetheless. 

“What’re you doing?” she asked while he took one of her fall jackets off of its hanger. 

“Victor from the stables is at our front door,” Joel gave.

Should he tell her that Echo had come back? No, she’d just woken up, and she was still hurt. That news could wait a few hours.

“Why?” she asked, and now, her eyes were open. “What’re you doing with my clothes?”

Maybe he couldn’t skirt around the truth, then. He took a deep breath, unsure of what her reaction would be.

“A paired patrol found Echo,” he said, trying to sound neutral. “She’s a little shaken but alright. Back at the stables now. Victor was hoping he could borrow a jacket of yours, give her a familiar scent.”

Now, Tess was sitting up, and he winced on her behalf. He shouldn’t have told her.

“Is she hurt?” Tess asked, pushing herself out of the chair, her breath hitching as she went. “Is she-”

“Hey, hey,” he said, leaving her jacket on the bed, going over to help her. “Slow down.”

“Joel.”

“She’s alright.”

“Find me a pair of pants.”

“Tess-”

“ _Joel._ ”

He found her a pair of pants, then helped her zip them up. He helped her into her coat, then finger-combed her hair, tied it back the way she told him to, half-up and in a bun. Her swelling had gone down enough; she asked him to find her a headband, just to keep the flyaways off of her face. Looking down at the lineup of headbands in her drawer, he saw that one was out of place, folded in half and left above the gradient of light to heavy that Tess meticulously maintained. Thick wool, something for a long trip. Maria had been the one to wash their bloody clothes. She’d soaked this wool headband, then put it back conspicuously, not wanting to disrupt Tess’s system.

He didn’t know how to pick a headband. He felt momentarily as if he were performing a sacred ritual. Afraid of making the wrong choice, he picked the one that was right in the middle of her folded lineup, grey-blue merino wool with sketched butterflies printed over top. He tied its ends loosely at the nape of her neck, then brushed his thumbs gently against the fabric. 

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” he asked as they headed downstairs together, Tess leaning heavily against the railing.

But he could never have convinced her to stay home. As they walked with Victor over to the stables, Tess refused to take the breaks he offered, pressed on even as her breath caught with the pain. The morning was cold, the sky covered in thick, grey clouds, more snow coming this evening. Though the early risers had gotten to work, they passed by households just starting to wake up, children getting ready for school, the older kids heading out for their chores. He could smell breakfast cooking. He wondered if Ellie was out with the animals now, herding sheep, petting cows. He wondered if, under different circumstances, he and Tess would have been the paired patrol that found the lost horse.

At the stables, Victor led them to where they’d tied up Echo, and though Joel tried to hold Tess back, she refused, headed straight for the horse. With a messy mane and haunted eyes, Echo looked terrified, lost for almost two weeks and all alone; begrudgingly, Victor let Tess go to Echo’s stall, moderate distance between Tess and the horse, Tess’s voice soft and encouraging, sweet nothings. She spoke to Echo the way she’d spoken to Ellie halfway across the country, as they tried to find shelter for the night in a place overrun with infected. That night, they’d relocated three times, desperate for somewhere to rest, and they went without dinner because they were afraid of giving away their location, and Ellie had admitted to Tess that she was scared, and Tess had held Ellie's hand as if she were a younger girl, then spoken to her with this same voice. The next day, Ellie had awkwardly thanked Tess while Joel was a number of paces back, and he could hear their quiet conversation in bits, remembered how Ellie told Tess that she felt safe because she knew Tess would never lie to her.

Tess’s voice faltered, and when he tried to see if she was in pain, he noticed that her eyes shimmered with tears she refused to shed, the forced vulnerability frightening her, crying with broken ribs too painful for her to withstand. She stroked the horse’s face to gently. All along, Echo had only ever warmed to Tess, and now, the horse seemed to only relax with Tess as well. He wasn’t needed here.

“There’s something I need to take care of at home,” he said, excusing himself, not wanting to bear witness. “I’ll meet you back there.”

She didn’t acknowledge him as he left.

* * *

When she returned home, he was sitting on the couch, hands clasped, no screens or words or loud sounds, nothing to occupy him while he waited for her. Had he not been concussed, he knew he would’ve sat restlessly anyway, glancing at the door every few minutes, wondering if he should go back, maybe walk her home, but the concussion magnified his restlessness. By the time she opened the front door, untied her boots, he felt his heart pound, so many unsaid words between them. He didn’t know what he could say to her. He didn’t know how to apologize for pains of hers that he hadn’t caused.

He met her in the entryway, and to his surprise, she reached for him, her coat still on, her eyes bloodshot, her yellowing bruises making her look sickly. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her in the entryway, her body tucked against his, home, home, home. When had he last hugged her? They spooned sometimes, but that didn’t count. In the QZ, he once touched her arm in consolation after a friend of hers had been killed by soldiers, only to have his wrist slapped in return. They’d had mechanical, need-based sex back then, no wandering touches, no foreplay, sometimes not even a kiss beforehand, and they would both dress afterward and pretend nothing had happened. Though Jackson had softened them, he still knew that he was only holding her like this, her face hidden against his shirt, her mittens on, her body small against his, because something was wrong.

“How’re the stables?” he asked, his lips brushing against her hair.

She was quiet, too quiet. He wanted her to yell about something. He wanted her to talk about how Maria was making her work overtime in the gardens, and also she’d been recruited to shear sheep, and what she really wanted was whiskey and some steak and a chance to go to bed early. He wanted her to take a deep breath, then use that breath to be mad. He wanted broken eggs in the kitchen, laundry that wasn’t done, begrudgingly going to the town meetings Maria led in order to look like _team players,_ judgmental stares when he found cassettes he liked but that she would never enjoy. 

Deep down, he’d always known that Tess was a woman who could cry over horses. Their business partnership transformed when he first discovered that she had feelings. All of the sudden, she liked stories, and people, she actually liked people, who would have thought? The begrudging respect that the people in the QZ had had for her was reciprocated. Though she wasn’t one to be fucked with, she was a comrade nonetheless. And she liked books. She liked books, and she liked stories. She liked cooking over campfires and hated cities and loved the Outside, and in the small hours of the night back at their apartment in the Zone, after they’d had sex twice, once to fulfill a need and another time because they’d realized that their _needs_ had different definitions now, she’d told him that the thought of growing old in the QZ made her feel sick. _Sometimes, I kind of hope a soldier will take me out on the Outside,_ she told him, _and then, I’ll be dying in the grass, and above me, the skyscrapers have tilted in a way I never thought I’d see. They could fall right then and crush me, and I would be content. My blood would stain the grass. I think soldiers leave the bodies where they die, head out once the threat’s gone. It would be just me and the sky. When was the last time you saw stars? Maybe we should camp out one night. The floodlights here give me nightmares, and before I die, I want to see the stars._

“Everything’s fine,” she gave, voice muffled.

Though her breaths were deeper now, he knew she was still in pain. He wanted to hold ice to her chest, sit down with her, listen to her. He wanted to hear her every thought. He wanted to hear her make so much noise that she couldn’t be ignored. 

“Everyone must’ve missed you there,” he said, prompting her. He wanted her to keep talking.

“Yeah,” she gave.

She wasn’t letting go of him. Why wasn’t she letting go? Through her clothes, he could feel her heartbeat. They needed to talk, but they weren’t capable of _talking._ He wanted to say the exact right thing so that she would understand, but he couldn’t understand what he meant in the first place. 

“Do you remember what Maria asked of us last spring?”

Of course he did, but he pretended not to react. He pretended he wasn’t nervous. Had Maria brought up marriage again? Though he understood that there was a method to her apparent madness, he wondered why she wouldn’t accept their answer. Tess had been against the idea, and that was that. He wondered if they would face the same proposition every year, turn it down yet again, insist that they were fine the way they were and that there were ways to build a community beyond bringing everyone together for a wedding. 

“Yes,” he gave, trying to sound indifferent, “I remember.”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said.

He closed his eyes, relief curling his toes. He wanted her to rip Maria a new one. He wanted her to tell him about how Maria was a priss who acted as if sock-knitting, which is _the hardest knitting_ by the way, were simple, and as if Tess were dumb for making mistakes. Oh, he wanted to hear her talk about how she was sick of rules. He wanted her to talk about how they ought to walk out the front gate so that they could have a better view of the sky.

“What part of it have you been thinking about?” he asked. 

She shifted her weight, still nestled against him. Today, she wanted to be held, for she was a killer, a cold-blooded killer who cried because her horse came home. She was painfully human. She was relentless and kind. When they smuggled Ellie out of the city, Tess had been gruff and gentle simultaneously, guiding the girl through the downtown area, protecting her, telling Ellie that everything would be okay and never lying. She wanted a good life, not because she was a good person but because she was a person at all, and after killing seven men hell-bent on killing her, she checked every single one of their bodies, searching for bitemarks she would never find. After killing in cold blood, she reached desperately for a reason, for an explanation, and when she found none, she broke. She hadn’t wanted to kill seven people. Had she been given more time to react, she would have wondered if they deserved to survive, but she only had those thoughts afterward, while seven bodies bled into the snow. She only realized that she didn’t believe her life was worth saving after she’d killed seven men.

They weren’t good people, but he loved her. Had he ever thought that before? There were plenty of emotions that words couldn’t describe, and he’d felt those for her. When she’d been bitten, he’d realized that he struggled to imagine a life without her. Was that love? No, love was an action, an understanding. He loved her now, holding her in the entryway of their home while he waited for her to talk about the pointlessness of marriage, the tyranny of his sister-in-law. He loved her because they were fallible in the same ways. He loved her because no one else he knew could fight back so ferociously, then feel guilty afterward. He loved her because she understood.

“I’m open to the possibility now,” she gave, then pulled away from him.

She wouldn’t face him as she shed her mittens, her coat. While she headed upstairs, she called back that she was going to take a shower, she smelled like horses, there was a casserole in the fridge if he wouldn’t mind heating it up, could he invite Ellie in for lunch? She disappeared into the master bedroom, and downstairs, he stood awkwardly, the impact of her words making his heart pound. _Open to the possibility,_ such a vague statement. Did she think he felt differently? Did he feel differently? No, how could he feel differently if he didn’t know how she felt at all? But he hadn’t imagined anything when Tommy first told him about Maria’s proposition, for he’d known that Tess would say no, and he’d been comfortable with that answer, not sure if they could even call their relationship _romantic._ What would a wedding be like for them? The word _wedding_ alone made him wince.

They weren’t the types for public displays. He doubted she would ever wear a dress. Who would officiate? In a chapel, they would never make sense. But last summer, she’d wanted to go beyond the walls at night, watch the sunset from the fields, useless powerlines and a long-abandoned car on their horizon, a dingy sheet beneath them, the long grasses hiding their bodies from sight. He could imagine them there, bodies resting on a blanket, hidden from view, the two of them alone as they made promises they both knew they would keep. He could kiss her there, no audience. He could love her beneath that wide, endless sky.

In the kitchen, he slid the casserole dish into the oven. He would miss when neighbors stopped bringing them food. Tomorrow, he would start helping from the sidelines with a construction project while Tess stayed home, and he dreaded the work, wished he could stay home and give her ice. Looking out the window, he saw Ellie’s lights on in the garage; if he knocked, she might be happy to see him. Upstairs, Tess was washing her hair, for he heard their bucket system stop spraying, a pause for her to lather. His arms felt empty now that she was gone.

If she brought it up again, he would say that he’d come around to the idea too, and from there, he would let her decide.


	8. Spring Rain

The body was in full rigor; he hadn’t been sure that infected could decompose that way. Putting counterpressure on the dead man’s shoulder, Tess pulled the bow from his arms, then took arrows one by one from the holder on his back. There was a note on a table nearby, so Joel picked it up, knew what it would say before he started reading. Traveling alone, thought he could make it, found spores and broke his mask and put a bullet through his head as a result. For a moment, Joel wondered how people had been immune but had given up on life before they could realize they were. 

“Nice bow,” Tess gave, pulling back the string. “Think it’s handmade.”

She’d had her gun holstered since they left Jackson hours ago. As she hung the bow off of her backpack, he wondered if she would reach for that first. 

“I’m going to look for a map,” he said, then headed that way in the ranger station.

The place had been abandoned long ago, the dark building cobwebbed in its corners, yellowing maps littering the floor. Beyond the windows, the sky had clouded; he knew rain was coming, and though they’d wanted to find shelter in this station, the dead man made him wary. No, they would press on through the forest, maybe find a cabin. Though he’d found a map of the national forest, he struggled to find their way, a compass unmatched to the overgrowth. If they could find a trail, he might be able to find them shelter, but he worried about the rain. One good pour, and they would be spending the rest of their makeshift vacation feeling damp and uncomfortable. And he knew how Tess felt about wet clothes.

They had pack covers, at least. On the wall, a map showed a trail to the nearest fire tower, maybe they could camp there for the night, not need to worry about bears. On the shelves by the main desk, Tess found one of the Foxfire books, flipped through the old pages while he compared the map on the wall to his own. Were the trails overgrown? They couldn’t have been the only people to come this way, despite the distance from any city. 

Before they left, they took out their raincoats, put covers over their packs. The rain had just started, and by the time they finally found the trail, fat drops were falling on their coats, the wind picking up. _April showers bring May flowers,_ he thought, but then again, they hadn't had much rain, but he’d seen a patch of flowers the week beforehand while on a patrol, and he’d picked some to bring home to Tess. Though she gave him a look and called him a sap, he caught her a few times staring at their makeshift mason jar vase and ever-so-softly smiling. The only good part of no longer having Tess on patrols was that he could bring her home surprises.

After a long climb they finally found the fire tower, looming above the horizon, looking down at the vast but foggy valley. The tower was only two flights of stairs up from the ground, but at least infected couldn’t climb that high. As Tess walked up the silver stairs, the metal shook beneath her. He wondered how structures like these had survived when they seemed so makeshift, so arbitrary. He wondered if there would be anything inside.

An Osbourne fire-finder, a big box of matches, a check-in book with yellowing pages, a twin-sized bed with a bare mattress. There were hooks by the door, so Tess pulled off her raincoat and pack cover, hung them up to dry. Though the metal roof was noisy in the rain, at least the place seemed watertight, and there was a small woodstove in the far corner, so if he managed some wood, they would stay warm all night. The bed was too small, but they each had a sleeping mat and light blankets, warm clothes for the evening. The last lookout had left a cast iron pan, so if they got the stove going, they could cook the potatoes they'd brought, take some of the weight out of their packs. After a long day of hiking, a hot meal sounded divine.

Hoisting her pack up onto the mattress, Tess started pulling out the food they’d brought, her spare clothes, the book she’d brought as well as the Foxfire one she’d taken. He hung up his coat and joined her, putting his sleeping pad on the floor, figuring the mattress would be of no use to them. Searching for dry clothes, he joined her in spreading things out on the mattress, and when Tess looked down at his stuff, she laughed, shook her head.

“You actually kept this?” she said, picking up the scarf he wore on patrols, one that he kept in the bottom of his bag at all times. “It’s a piece of shit.”

But he liked that scarf, rustic in texture from the sheep in Jackson, wool sheared then spun then knit haphazardly into this grey scarf Tess had given to him. After the wonky socks she'd attempted but never completed, Tess had asked Maria for something simpler, something that didn’t require a heel turn, so Maria told Tess how to knit a scarf, a very basic scarf, just a rectangle. She could handle a rectangle, couldn’t she? But the scarf was uneven, more trapezoidal than rectangular, and from enough wear, he’d figured out where all of the dropped stitches were. If he happened to pick it up wrong, he figured the whole thing would unravel, but it kept him warm during winter patrols. He was shocked she’d never seen him wear it, but then again, she’d either slept in or gone early to the gardens, each of them waking up alone since she stopped going on patrols. Maybe they’d missed a lot of things about each other.

“It’s warm,” Joel gave. “Tucks into my coat real nice.”

“If I ever try again, I’ll make you a better one.”

“This one suits me just fine.”

“Ellie really loves that sweater.”

“Yeah, she does,” Joel said, thinking of the many times he and Tess had had to soak the alien pullover on the girl’s behalf. Though Ellie insisted on living alone, her laundry seemed to magically appear in their pile every week, and she never questioned why a basket would appear next to her desk, her clothes clean and dry inside. 

“Did you see all the diagrams Maria did?” Tess asked, then shimmied out of her jeans, went to put on flannel pajama bottoms instead. “Really in-depth. A whole grid and everything. A lot more work than I’d ever do.”

“I know that,” he said, then picked up his mess of a scarf. “Believe me, I know.”

She playfully slapped his arm, and he laughed, her sweaty clothes coming off, switching into a sweater for the evening. He had yet to change.

“I guess this means I’m the one gathering wood,” he said.

Turning around, she furrowed her brow, then noticed the stove.

“Yeah, I guess so,” she shrugged off.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t see that.”

“I didn’t see it!”

“Tess.”

“It’s dark in here,” she said, then pointed to the many windows. “Overcast. Rainy. _Dark._ ”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

And though gathering wood in the rain frustrated him, at least the tower had an ax, and the fire thankfully took, the tower starting to warm up, the skillet full of potatoes Tess had cut up resting atop and cooking. Tess had set out her sleeping pad to the left of his, and now that he was out of his sweaty clothes, he wanted nothing more than to sit down alongside her, eat a hot meal while they listened to the rain outside, and go to bed satiated. 

“These’ll take a while,” he said, setting the cast iron’s paired spatula on the fire-finder. “Anything interesting in there?”

From her spot on top of their makeshift bed, Tess looked up from her book, something with a sparse cover, something borrowed. Since she’d stopped going on patrols, she’d started borrowing books from the tiny library in their settlement, asking around for new things to read. Though he’d tried to find something she would like in the library near where he patrolled, he struggled to figure out what she would enjoy, her taste ranging from lighthearted classics to gore that made him wince. Sometimes, he would pick up a book, then go to ask her if she liked this author, only to remember that Tommy or Eugene was on patrol with him, not Tess. 

“Not really,” Tess gave, closing the book without marking her page. He’d never understood how she could do that and then return to the same spot. “Maria liked this one, so I should’ve known it would be a drag.”

He sat down beside her on his own mat, stretched out his legs. Having four windowed walls made for a beautiful landscape even though the skies were filled with fog; he could see the outlines of mountaintops in the distance, the jagged lines of fir branches, mist hanging along the treeline. How had Ellie gotten by, living in a QZ all her life? When they first ventured to the Outside, she’d been so impressed, but he and Tess had brushed her off, forced her to keep walking. Maybe they should have been gentler. Maybe that should have thought about how it would feel to never see this kind of beauty, and then to be faced with that beauty while fearing the future. Ellie’s future had been unknown, but _damn_ , that sky!

Tess touched his cheek, so he looked at her, her eyes hooded, her lips parted. In the half-dark of the tower, her eyes were a different color. He’d missed her eyes. For the long time it took her face to heal, he’d missed being able to look at her eyes and not have her wince at his stare. And he’d missed kissing her. By the time he could kiss her again, he'd almost felt that he was kissing her for the first time, the two of them alone and loveless in the QZ, fulfilling a need and nothing more. Afterward, she’d told him that that had been stupid, that he shouldn’t get any ideas, and that if he told anyone, she would kill him, and she’d meant that she would kill him, but he’d gone back to his assigned apartment thinking that there could be something more. Maybe the isolation of the Zone had gotten to him, but he liked her. She was good at doing business, she was lethal, and when he stuck with her in the Zone, he never needed to worry about work assignments, petty dramas, being stuck with a bad crowd. He liked her, and back then, _liking_ had been revolutionary.

But when she kissed him now, she kissed him as if they’d kissed plenty of times before. She kissed him as if there would never be a _wrong idea._ She kissed him beneath stars they couldn’t see, in an empty forest covered in fog. She kissed them as if they were vacationers traveling through the mountains, two normal people, a pair who would take pictures on a disposable camera and be excited to receive those developed photos in a month. She kissed him as if they'd both never been hurt.

He’d missed holding her. He’d missed having her in bed with him. Back in the QZ, they'd never talked about such things, but now, he wanted to say it all. _I missed sleeping next to you. I missed waking up with you, and I still miss seeing you in the morning, having you tell me to get up, walking with you to the stables. I miss riding next to you. I know why you haven’t gone out since the ambush. I know you wake up in the middle of the night scared, though you won’t tell me about those dreams. I would never ask you to do something that makes you afraid, but I miss you. I want to be with you, whether we’re riding down the creek trails together, or sharing nightmares in the small hours of the morning. I want to be with you wherever you are._

She pulled his thermal shirt up over his head. She liked being on top. As she pinned him down on their makeshift bed, he didn’t care if the potatoes burned. He didn’t care if the whole fire tower burned down. _What a crazy story,_ he thought as he pulled her toward him, kissed her again, and imagined flames around them, a whole mist-covered forest and then the two of them surrounded by flames.

* * *

She held his palm flat against her bare ribcage.

“The spot’s a little numb, but otherwise, it’s not painful anymore,” she said, looking up at him.

She rested on her side, still naked. They’d eaten dinner naked. She always got handsy when he wasn’t wearing clothes. 

“How long will it stay numb?” he asked, thumbing that spot, remembering the fist-sized pale circle surrounded by bruises. He’d never seen that kind of impact before.

“Maria thinks maybe forever,” Tess said indifferently, “but I think it’s just a part of getting old.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re so old.”

“You’re one to talk.”

He laughed lightly, looking down at her body, this one troublesome spot. His left knee sometimes buckled on him though his right one never did. When he was young, he’d never thought about how this one body would need to carry him through his whole life, how a misstep sometimes couldn’t be corrected. Years from now, he might touch her in this spot and not have her notice.

Trailing his fingers lower, he palmed her stomach, taut, muscular. 

“You go to the gym too much,” he said, squeezing. 

Her abdominals were still visible even after eating, but then again, maybe she was flexing for emphasis. 

“Oh, you wound me,” she deadpanned. “I’ll start getting weaker just to please you.”

The rain hadn’t let up all night, the pounding against the roof incessant. What little light the stove cast made her look candlelit. The weather had turned her French braids frizzy. 

“Do you remember New Year’s of 2028?” she asked, sounding all too casual.

Though he didn’t know if that was the end or beginning of 2028, he nonetheless knew the day she meant. The QZ guards would set off fireworks for the new year, the only holiday still recognized, maybe just a way to dispose of contraband. If they climbed onto the roof of the buildings connecting the north tunnel, then they could see the lights better, more space to enjoy the spectacle. Where they lived in the QZ, plenty of people would congregate around windows, loudly _ooh_ and _ah_ at the fireworks, and Tess hated the crowds, the noise. No, they would go to the north tunnel instead, and there, they would be alone to enjoy the fireworks.

That year, they’d sat on the roof together, passing back and forth a bottle of good scotch Bill had found. He could still remember her coat, patched in so many places, bloodstains, she’d had a bad habit of getting shot at while wearing that thing. When the fireworks went off, he could watch them reflected in the shine of her eyes. Though they didn’t know when midnight was, he kissed her anyway, and his mind filled in _should auld acquaintance be forgot_ while their gloved hands met, fingers entwining. 

“‘Course I do,” he gave. The magic of that night had kept him feeling good for weeks.

“I’ll have you know,” she said, looking up at him, Kubrick stare, “that’s a top-tier masturbation fantasy of mine.”

Though he knew himself to be blunt, he would never grow accustomed to just how clear, concise, and painfully honest Tess could be. And he didn’t want to admit it, but he’d forgotten about taking off his glove, slipping his hand beneath her coat, undoing the button of her jeans. Now, at least, he could remember the hot feeling of her breath against his neck, the sounds of the fireworks around them, not bombs or gunshots for once, and her breath hitched, and he smiled because this time he’d taken her by surprise. 

“Not about to forget that one,” she gave, still looking at him.

His hand was on her stomach. He looked dumbfounded.

Rolling her eyes, she said, “Take the bait, big guy.”

Then, she put her palm over his, dragged his hand lower.

* * *

For the whole winter, she stopped eating meat.

At first, he’d figured that it was too tough for her hurt jaw, oats and beans instead, soft cheese she made with milk and vinegar. When they had steak in the house, she would push more toward Ellie, look suspicious as she ate anything else, and later, he would ask why, and she would brush him off, just not in the mood, but it wasn’t as though they had steak every day. He didn’t mind if she wanted to go vegetarian, but as her bruises faded, her jaw healing, she would brush off a trip to the Tipsy Bison, not in the mood for whatever was on that day, and he wanted to know if something was wrong. Had she seen something he hadn’t? She’d lost weight, and he didn’t know if he should be concerned.

But she pulled back on the bowstring, her stance practiced, muscle memory. When she was a girl, her father had taught her bow-hunting first, then how to shoot a gun. She’d said that he told her killing was not to be taken lightly, and a gun was too powerful, too engineered; if she wanted to hunt, then she needed to hunt in a way that took effort, time, practice, a way that honored the animal. Hiding in the ferns ahead was a snowshoe hare, colored to camouflage but caught in her discerning gaze, and she aimed as she breathed, focusing right through the heart. After all of the rain the day beforehand, the forest was bright and lush, tall trees keeping them in the shade but the sky cloudless, the ground soft beneath his feet. She was wearing a tank top, so he could see the way her muscles contracted with the motions, the ministrations as she held the arrow steady.

The shot rang out in the quiet forest. The rabbit stopped moving. While she headed over to the ferns, he followed slowly, and as she pulled the arrow from the rabbit’s body, he could’ve sworn he heard her whisper _thank you._

They ate on the deck of the fire tower, legs dangling over the side. From there, they could see all of the mountain peaks in the distance, copses of firs, the patches where trails had once been. There was another tower in the distance, maybe fifteen miles away, a much longer hike than that. Were there others looking at them? He wondered what those others would think, two people squinting against the sunlight, roasted rabbit and potatoes on dishes they found in the tower, Tess holding her plate to her lips so she could scrape the last bits into her mouth. They were tanning the hide along the railing. They hadn’t bothered boiling their water before drinking.

“Thought you stopped eating meat,” he said offhandedly, a forcibly benign piece of conversation.

Since March, they’d been sharing lunches at the Tipsy Bison, her break from her gardening duties coinciding with his break from his own chores, and he’d watched her eat plenty of steak sandwiches there, the two of them sitting at the bar, her foot nudging his. She would end up with mustard dripping onto the heel of her hand, then lick it off, her gaze stuck on his. Most of the time, they would head their separate ways afterward, but once, on a day that was otherwise unmemorable to the point that he never understood why she’d done so, she palmed his chest and kissed him after they left the bar, then headed back to the gardens, not a care in the world. He’d stood there, half-stunned as she walked away, and wondered what had possessed her to kiss him, especially in public.

She furrowed her brow, said, “No, ‘course not.”

“You didn’t eat any all winter.”

Though he tried to act casual, he wanted this to be a serious conversation. Tess was too stubborn to give something up so easily.

“Change of tastes,” she shrugged off. “My jaw hurt.”

“Your jaw hurt ‘til March?”

“You don’t have to be an ass about it,” she huffed, standing up, heading down the tower’s stairs, going to wash her dish in the nearest stream. 

And he knew Tess to be abrasive, to roll her eyes and grow annoyed with him over the smallest things, but she was rarely defensive. He’d struck a nerve, and because she didn’t want to talk about why, he would be left to speculate. He’d been left to speculate on a lot of things. Though he knew that he needed to trust her, that whatever she told him should be taken as the truth, he had never been given a good reason as to why she refused to return to patrols. Of course, he’d surmised that she didn’t want to be attacked again, but all he’d been told had been that she’d spoken to Maria about the patrols and had decided to stay in the settlement instead. When he’d asked her why she started going to the gym, she’d shrugged the question off. A number of times, he’d woken alongside her after she had a nightmare, and when he asked her what had happened, she would say _nothing, go back to sleep,_ but her breathing would tell him that she was still scared. 

Though he knew how much Tess hated feeling scared, he’d thought she would feel safe expressing her fears to him. After her admission of considering Maria’s proposition, he’d thought she wanted something more, but instead, she took his concern as picking a fight. He didn’t know how to care for her in a way that didn’t suffocate her. Maybe he didn’t know how to care for her at all.

When he saw her coming back from the river, he winced. Why had they decided to take a vacation to the middle of nowhere? Why had they decided to take a vacation at all? He’d thought that being alone together would make things easier, but instead, they were reverting to the old days, in denial of their pushed-together twin beds in the QZ, pretending that they weren’t what they obviously were. They had sex so that they wouldn’t say what was on their minds. And, well, he wasn’t upset about the sex part, he was fine with that part, he wasn’t being critical of that part, but in February, when they had sex for the first time since the attack, she’d told him to stop being so gentle, and he’d wondered why she would say something like that. Her chest remained numb, even months later. The snow had melted, the rivers running high, the plants sprouting, but one part of her chest was still numb. He didn’t want to hurt her, but she had never been forthcoming about what pained her. 

Maybe he didn’t want to talk to her either. What were they supposed to do? She’d mentioned going hunting, but he didn’t want to haul a deer anywhere, didn’t want to take his chances with a moose. There were wolves in these woods, so eerily quiet, strangely void of infected. She was the only person he wanted to be with in these deep woods, but as she took each of the fire tower’s steps, he wished he could be far away from her. 

Looming above where he sat, she looked down at him, said, “I want to get drunk.”

Had his watch still worked, he would’ve seen that it was two in the afternoon. She’d bungee-corded two bottles of whiskey to her pack, keeping her back level for the whole hike out so that nothing would spill. They were both lightweights, two fingers making her tipsy. Yes, he also wanted to get drunk here in plain daylight, stumbling down fire tower steps, wolves howling in the distance. He could see the tiny hairs on her arms. He very much wanted to get drunk.

“Lead the way,” he said, then followed her back into the tower.

* * *

By the time they reached the mountain’s peak, he’d sweat through his shirt, and the tops of her shoulders looked sunburnt.

“Finally,” she said, with no relief in her voice. 

The sun was bright; he held his palm over his face, blocking the light out. Beyond them, the long, rocky drop led to a little pond, an array of large, spiked rocks surrounding the water. They’d seen tattered signs telling climbers of the dangers of these rocks, how one misstep could be fatal, so only experienced climbers should attempt these routes. Staring at the jagged formations, he wondered why anyone would be possessed to climb something like that at all.

“To be honest,” she said, sitting down in the gravel, “I expected more than this.”

In the distance, he could see snow-capped mountains just like the ones back in Jackson. The trails down this mountain were lined with sparse trees. Though the view was beautiful, he’d seen chairlifts on his way there, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the chairlifts. Had they taken this vacation years ago, they would’ve gotten to this peak much faster, but instead, they decided to walk, and on a hot day no less. And why had they climbed the mountain at all? They’d been stuck at the tower, each reading, when Tess said that they should do something, and he said that they ought to climb to this peak. They hadn’t had an itinerary. In the end, he’d wanted space for their mutual silence, open air so that the quiet they kept would feel less suffocating. They’d taken a vacation in order to escape, and now, he wanted an escape from that escape, and to some degree, he thought Tess might want that too.

She pulled her water bottle from her pack, then chugged what remained. Given that he still felt a bit hungover, he figured that Tess must be about to hurl. He wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do now.

“I’m going for a swim,” she said, heading over to the pond, leaving her pack against a rock and dipping her empty canteen into the water. She left the bottle on the shore, then waded in, clothes still on.

Walking over to join her, leaving his pack alongside hers, he said, “Thought you hated wet clothes.”

“They’re already wet,” she gave, her shirt sticking to her, a sweat stain covering her back. “Can’t get any worse.”

He had “9 to 5” stuck in his head, but he couldn’t remember some of the lyrics. _Stumble out of bed and I tumble to the kitchen._ Unlacing his boots, pulling off his socks, he undressed while she dipped beneath the water. Was it really stumble at first? _Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumpin’, out on the street the traffic..._ what was the next word? _9 to 5, for service and devotion,_ he hadn’t heard the song in years. Stepping into the water in just his underwear, he felt uncomfortably naked, Tess treading water while still wearing her jeans. She’d even kept her headband on. Back in the QZ, they’d had an irreconcilably hot summer one year, and as Joel and Tess headed out to Bill’s for a pickup, she’d dipped her headband into one of the rivers along the way, then put it back on, trying to keep cool. They kept having to stop and take breaks, and by the time they got to Bill’s, they smelled like shit, and Bill hadn’t been afraid to tell them so. But otherwise, she always took her headband off when they went swimming. She must have been too warm, and exhausted, and still a little hungover. Could a hangover be sweated out, or was that just a myth? _In the same boat with a lot of your friends, waiting for the day that the tide’s gonna come in, and everything is going to be good,_ no, that wasn’t right. Did Tess like Dolly? Of course she liked Dolly. Everyone liked Dolly. He knew that Tess hated Madonna, but she’d never said anything either way about Dolly.

Plugging his nose, he dipped beneath the water, and when he came up for air, the sun stung his eyes. The whiskey had been a bad idea. Drinking in the daylight had never worked out well for him. While he slumped against a tree, he'd watched in plain daylight as Tess braced herself against the same tree and vomited away from him, but an hour later, she was back to the bottle anyway. They didn’t have anything better to do. Why hadn’t he made some kind of plan? When Maria approached them with this idea, a week off, go wherever you please, the forests are beautiful this time of year, he’d thought a trip would be wonderful, but he couldn’t outrun himself. They couldn’t outrun the hurt between them. Though he’d thought they were making progress, though her admission of reconsidering marriage - he winced at the word - had seemed promising, they hadn’t talked about it again since then. Tess still refused to go on patrols, and though she wasn’t instrumental to the patrols, he missed her. He missed her. Was it selfish to miss her? Sometimes, he wondered if all they had were memories, and if he held steadfast to those memories because memories were a rarity in these times. No matter where their relationship went, he would always look at Tess and feel something. He’d never truly labeled those feelings, never managed a proper word. _Love,_ he’d tried, but sometimes, the emotion felt like something else. He wondered if they were growing apart. He wondered if they would both be happier living with other people. 

He was unfamiliar with deliberate grief. He’d forgotten how to be upset about things that weren’t fatal. He missed waking up at the same time as her, then groggily getting out of bed and dressing together, then heading off on their patrol route. He missed how bad she was at making breakfast. He missed when they would sit on the porch together at night, their chairs close, and she would lean over and rest her head on his shoulder. He wanted her back, but she was just beyond his reach, his fingers barely brushing her sleeve, his arm outstretched, no luck. They were good together, weren’t they? Or did he just want them to be?

Swimming over to her, he watched as she tried to scrub some dirt off of her tank top. Her headband was dripping. Above them, the jagged rock formations looked fatal. He wondered what would happen if they died right now in a landslide. Maybe he wanted his last memory to be fearfully reaching for her and saying her name as the darkness overcame him.

“Do you like Dolly?” he asked, reaching for something, anything.

She looked at him incredulously, asked, “The sheep?”

“Parton,” he said, then furrowed his brow. “Sheep? What sheep?”

“The clone sheep,” she said as if that were obvious. “Or, well, the one in the pastures back home too.”

“Someone has a sense of humor.”

“Pretty sure Ellie named that one.”

He laughed awkwardly, said, “I’m not surprised.”

“Yes,” she said, answering his question, “I do like Dolly.”

“I can’t remember the lyrics to one of her songs,” he said, treading water. “I spent the whole hike up here trying to figure them out.”

“We have one of her tapes, don’t we?”

“Probably somewhere.”

“Just wait until we get home.”

“I think maybe my mind needed something to munch on.”

“Crazy, how that works,” she gave. “How you can think in circles and feel as if you’re figuring something out, when all you’ve really been doing is singing the wrong lyrics.”

“You always say the sweetest things.”

She rubbed between her eyebrows. He wondered if she might be sick again, leaning against a tree for balance, pushing him away.

* * *

He felt her breath hitch, their bodies close on their makeshift bed, the sky dark around them. As the winter turned to spring, he’d felt that same sensation a number of times, Tess waking in the night and trying to force the fear out with a sigh, and when he asked her if she was alright, she said yes and then pulled away from him, closed her eyes. But as he looked at her, he found that she wasn’t awake yet, still in the throes of a bad dream, so he reached out, touched her shoulder, _Tess. Tess. Tess, wake up. It’s just a dream._

When her eyes opened, she met his gaze for a moment, then closed her eyes again, let out that long, predictable sigh, denied her fear the energy it needed to survive. Her brow creased, her body spent; she was exhausted by these nightmares, sick of how they kept coming back. He wondered what she’d seen in her mind, what stories she kept telling herself, what reminders she’d been given for being afraid.

“What happened?” he asked, voice quiet.

The world around them was dark, nothing but stars beyond their windows. They were alone in these woods. If she were to tell him the truth, no one else would hear.

“A nightmare,” she brushed off, but he knew she understood what he'd meant.

“Tess,” he said, slight desperation in his voice.

“Go back to sleep, Joel,” she said, then turned onto her other side, faced away from him.

“No.”

He touched her shoulder again, his fingers running down her arm, trying to get her to look at him again. 

“You don’t tell me anything,” he managed, and now, he sounded desperate, a plain and vulnerable kind of desperate, her exhaustion paired with his own fear. “I need to know.”

“No,” she said, pushing his hand away.

“Tess-”

Sighing again, she forced herself up, her steps sloppy from sleep, her palm going to her forehead as she made her way to the door, left the tower. He sat up, listened for her to walk down the stairs, but she stayed on the deck, her body visible through the windows. Though he wanted to follow her, he watched her lean her palms against the railings, bow her head, take deep breaths, and he knew that she wanted to be alone. He knew that, if he were to follow her, she would just move further and further away from him, first to the bottom of the stairs, then to the creek, then into the forest. He would lose her if he didn’t give her space, so he lay back, closed his eyes. Sleeping without her felt like going to bed with an important but forgotten task left undone. He turned onto his side and wondered if he would need to live with never knowing what haunted her.

When she came back to bed, she jostled him, woke him, but he pretended to stay asleep, not wanting to make her anxious. To his surprise, she curled up next to him, the angle awkward though he could tell she wanted to hold him, to be held, so he took a deep breath, pretended to wake up, and groggily turned onto his back, took her into his arms. He couldn’t describe the feeling of holding her. He’d always thought that being independent would keep him safe. When he was self-sufficient, he was okay, or at least that was what he told himself, the bills making him anxious, the gunshots at night in the QZ keeping him awake. So long as he could hold his own, he would be fine, but holding her made him realize that he was never meant to be alone. Holding her made him realize that he, and maybe all people, were meant to be near one another, someone loved, someone who felt like home. Holding her, he felt as if he’d come home.

He stroked the back of her neck, the baby hairs there. He liked when their heartbeats matched in time, both of them relaxing together. He closed his eyes, wondering if they could fall asleep like this.

“I couldn’t eat meat,” she said, tone so soft he could barely hear her, “because I didn’t want anything else to die in my name.”

Before he first went back to his duties in town, he’d slept in, then gone downstairs to find Tess and Maria talking. They hadn’t noticed him, so he eavesdropped, for Tess tended to tell Maria things she never told him, and he wanted to know. She had been in enough pain that he wanted to know.

“They all had coats, and boots,” Tess said, and he could hear the remorse in her voice, the pain. “Halfway back, I realized all that I’d left behind. They were dead, and I just left them there. I didn’t take their coats.”

“You were hurt,” Maria brushed off. She was objective to a fault. He wondered how his emotional brother could stand the way she compartmentalized. Had Maria been there, the coats would’ve come home with her, but she could understand why Tess wouldn’t do the same. “You were trying to stay safe.”

“But,” Tess said, then held herself back, her frustration clear. Though he’d known that she was thinking about how she’d checked every single body for bites, had peeled back their coats and boots already, had taken the time to check, Maria never knew, so she would never understand Tess's hesitation. “I’m fine under pressure. I don’t know why I didn’t take anything.”

Maria paused, then asked, “Do you think those coats would’ve benefited us here?”

“What do you mean?” Tess asked, and he knew that that was her _suspicious voice,_ that she didn’t like where this conversation was going and thought it should stop, now.

“Do you think that those coats would’ve helped our community,” Maria asked, “or do you think they would have given those men’s deaths meaning instead?”

He’d watched Tess kill plenty of people in the QZ. Though they were doing what they needed to do to survive, he couldn’t overlook the cold-blooded shots they’d both fired. They were shitty people; they both knew that much. But Jackson was supposed to be an escape. In Jackson, they only ever shot infected. They helped stragglers, and they took in the needy, and when someone needed a coat, someone else patched up their old one and gave it away. Women who killed seven people didn’t belong there.

“You would be dead now if you hadn’t killed those men,” Maria gave. He wasn’t sure if Maria was telling the truth, for she had no good reason to lie but none to be honest either. “Your body will do awful things to stay alive. You feel remorse because, if you’d been given a choice, you would have chosen differently. But you weren’t given a choice. All you can do is accept that and move on.”

But she hadn’t accepted that. She stopped eating meat all winter, a kind of repentance. She started going to the gym so that next time the men would be afraid to throw the first punch. She refused to return to patrols because even killing infected made her feel like a monster. But now, she could shoot a rabbit, then roast the meat for a meal. She could eat steak sandwiches again. Though she still feared what she was capable of, she no longer feared that she was a monster.

He thumbed her shoulderblade, held her close. She smelled like river water. He wondered how anyone could be a monster if they were loved.

“I missed you,” he said, sounding so small, and she hid her face against him, not wanting to be seen.

* * *

They couldn’t sleep. She told him about how her brothers had climbed rocks like the jagged ones they’d seen that day. He told her that the last vacation he’d taken Sarah on had been to Tucson, and he’d busted his savings on the plane tickets. She spent the first year of the pandemic wondering if she would lose her scholarships, then if she’d defaulted on her student loans. She’d never broken a bone before the outbreak; he’d broken his arm as a child, and his ankle while on a construction job as an adult. She’d been the first in her family to go to college. When Sarah was born, the first emotion he’d felt had been fear.

He wondered if vulnerability might be addictive. The world hadn’t ended yet; they both wanted to test their luck. Her body was warm against his. Might they be invincible? They’d beaten death plenty of times already. She wanted to go look at the stars. Though the night was cool, they both still felt the heat of the peak, so they didn’t put on warm clothes as they left the tower, goosebumps raising on their skin. They walked away from the tower, found a spot with an uninterrupted view of the sky, then lay down together, sides flush, bodies still close. The forest seemed to expand and contract around them, as if the place gained and lost size with their heartbeats. Pointing up at the sky, she told him where the Seven Sisters were, a thumbprint-looking constellation. She said that she liked that one because seeing it told her that there was little light pollution, that they were somewhere good and far away.

Of course, he knew the big dipper. He thought he knew Orion’s Belt, but she shook her head and guided his hand to the proper spot, he was off by a few stars. Decades ago, he’d been camping with his scout troop - he told her not to make fun - and they’d seen the northern lights where they were camping, and there had been some scientific explanation, the troop leader reading out of a guide book. But Tess knew the explanation, science freak, she knew that the northern lights were caused by solar winds - he didn’t understand how these differed from regular winds, and she didn’t bother explaining - and that magnetic poles pulled charged protons and electrons in certain directions - he wasn’t following the explanation, his troop leader had been much less in-depth - and something about electrons and protons bouncing off of the earth’s atmosphere, an energy release, and then, they all saw colors. The world seemed so drab when he forgot about northern lights. She said that they might get lucky someday and see them over Jackson, provided that the right circumstances occurred. 

He could remember how newspapers would talk about supermoons and comets and other _every seventy years_ phenomena that the public would either care about or ignore. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever listened.

“Do you remember what you said a couple months back?” he asked, being vague on purpose.

She looked at him, her brow furrowed.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” she said.

He looked away from her because he needed to.

“About what Maria had wanted us to do.”

For a moment, she was quiet; then, she managed, “Yes.”

“Is that still something you’re interested in?”

Above them, the stars were painfully bright. He didn’t know how they’d been able to sleep with skies this bright. Though they could see stars in Jackson, these stars were endless, the Milky Way available to them and them alone, the universe putting on a performance. Sometimes, he could still see satellites orbiting, but because he didn’t want to think of astronaut fates, he pretended those were shooting stars, then wished for a good thing to come someone else’s way.

“Yes,” she said, voice quiet. 

She sounded embarrassed but confident. At least he could trust that she meant what she was saying.

“Would you like me to-”

“No, no, no,” she said quickly, not letting him elaborate. 

“Okay.”

“Yeah.”

“This summer?”

“I mean,” she sounded flustered, “if there’s time.”

“I think there will be.”

“Yeah, okay," she said. "Okay.”

Tentatively, cautiously, he reached down for her hand, and their fingers entwined, their gazes still stuck on the stars.


	9. Moment of Truth

Tess had asked him to pick her up at the gym in town before he headed over to Tommy and Maria’s. _Not sure you want to work out before this meeting,_ he’d said, but she’d been adamant: she wouldn’t talk about wedding-related topics - or use the word _wedding_ at all - unless she was exhausted and endorphin-high. When he headed into the community center, walked past the makeshift library, he found her in the big room they'd put exercise equipment in, and there, she was spotting the bar for Dina, one of Ellie’s friends and someone Tess frequently worked out alongside. And Dina was strong, pressing seventy pounds even though she was sixteen. Tess had said Dina had her eye on group patrols, just like Ellie; he figured that with that kind of work ethic she would make patrols in no time. 

The bar went back up onto the bench’s rests, and Tess held up a palm for Dina to high-five. 

“You joining the campaign later?” Dina asked Tess as Joel walked in.

Tess laughed, sweat on her brow, said, “Never really been into Dungeons and Dragons.”

“Listen, it’s not as nerdy as people act like it is,” Dina said, sounding embarrassingly sincere. “For a few blissful hours, you get to pretend you’re an elf on a bizarre quest for greatness. You get to _travel._ Really, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t come.”

For a moment, Tess considered the proposition, and Joel crossed his arms, wondering if he would need to tell Maria that Tess had foregone wedding planning so that she could play Dungeons and Dragons with Ellie’s friends. She wouldn’t blow Maria off, would she? Would she?

“Leave a spot for me next week,” Tess gave, then nodded toward Joel. “I’m a little tied up at the moment.”

Dina waved to Joel and smiled; he smiled back awkwardly. He liked Dina. Though Cat had convinced Ellie to, much to his chagrin, get a tattoo, Dina had stepped in, asked if maybe they all should wait a little while longer, not do something they would regret. On some level, he understood why Ellie wanted to tattoo over the bitemark, but, still, a tattoo? Why would anyone want a tattoo? Especially at such a young age-

Casually, Dina asked, “What’re you guys up to?”

“Planning a wedding,” Tess said, picking up her backpack from by the door.

Dina laughed, said, “No, really.”

“Hope your elf does well tonight!” Tess called back, and then, they were heading out of the community center, walking in the direction of Tommy and Maria’s house. 

Summer was in full swing, barbecue cooking outside, the scent of woodsmoke wafting up throughout the humid town. The sun set so late that they ended up losing track of time and then aching through their patrols the next morning, only having had four hours of sleep. Because they didn’t want to heat the house, they were back to their Tipsy Bison breakfasts; he was thankful Tess was southern too because she reacted to grits the same way he did. He’d made sure their swimming hole in the river was still dammed, so sometimes, they would take a dip after a long, hot morning, trying to cool off before heading home, and that morning, the heat had been intense enough for her to dip under, even get her hair wet.

“I don’t want there to be too many slow songs,” Tess had said, brushing her wet hair off of her face, “and I don’t want the...you know, that one part, I don’t want it to take too long.”

“The ceremony?”

With cold water against his too-warm body, he had been relaxed enough to deal with Tess’s nonsensical wedding ideas.

“Yeah, whatever,” she said, sounding insulted by the word _ceremony_. “I want it to be quick.”

“No vows?”

“Well, I mean, that’s not _really_ that part, right?”

“I’m pretty sure it is.”

Tess bit her lip, considered this prospect.

“We can leave that part in,” she said, “but nothing personal, okay?”

He laughed, asked, “Why not?”

“Because,” she gave, then didn’t substantiate, but he could fill in _because it’s embarrassing._ And really, he didn’t want to say more personal vows in front of the rest of the settlement. Though he didn’t want to admit it to Tess, he harbored the same fear she had, one of a second plague coming as soon as he said the words _I love you,_ even just the thought of those words making him wince _._ At least they both thought omitting certain things would keep chaos at bay. That way, they both could think they were heroes instead of cowards. 

He reached out for her, reaching his arm around her back, tugging her to him as he asked, “Any other demands?”

Batting his arm away, she said, “You can’t touch me while we talk about this stuff.”

“Why not?” 

“Because it makes it weird.”

He held up his hands, admitted defeat, then asked again, “What else don’t you want?”

“A chamber choir performance,” she said, and he laughed because he thought she was joking around.

He wasn’t sure he would ever get used to having people in town say hello to him with a smile. In the QZ, he’d been greeted in a way that either showed mutual respect or fear, but now, everyone said hi because he was Joel from down the street, Joel who fixed their gutters, Joel who built them a crib. And Tess, the people to whom she delivered fruits and vegetables adored her, and the so-called _dungeon_ that Ellie and her friends played in wanted Tess to join their games. After the ambush, they’d had their fridge filled with home-cooked meals, the two of them fed for weeks. Though Tess had been silent regarding the upcoming wedding - or, at least, she had been silent until she’d told Dina why they were leaving - he figured that people in town would come and celebrate with them even though they themselves weren’t particularly invested in the event. He wondered if afterward the others would question why there hadn’t been certain parts of this wedding, or why _romantic_ had been purposefully omitted because Tess scrunched her face up at the word. 

As they climbed Tommy and Maria’s porch-steps, Tess glanced at him, and to his surprise, she looked nervous.

“Moment of truth,” she said, then knocked twice.

* * *

“I really didn’t think she would push that hard for the _chamber choir._ ”

The windows in their bedroom were open, the curtains billowing and casting shadows in the moonlight. Alongside him in bed, Tess turned onto her side and faced him, not wanting to go to sleep yet. He liked these summer nights, cool breezes coming in through their windows, their pillows pushed together, their faces close. 

“But, oh,” she said, trying to mimic Maria, “ _they’ve been practicing._ ”

He laughed, shook his head against his pillow.

“I’m surprised she didn’t ask if we wanted doves released at the end of the ceremony,” he said.

She gave him a look, said, “Don’t give Maria any ideas.”

“How’s the dress look?”

Tess rolled her eyes. 

“Like a dress,” she gave. “Fits, though.”

“Oh, come on,” he said, smiling. “Give me _something_ to tide me over.”

“You're way too excited about this.”

“It’s a sight I’ll never see again.”

“Yeah, and one you shouldn’t be seeing at all,” Tess said, “except Maria and I happen to wear a similar size.”

“She told me the sleeves were embroidered.”

Tess huffed. “So much for what she said about _bad luck._ ”

“Are you suddenly turning superstitious?”

She gave him a look, but still, he thought she might be.

“You have it so easy,” Tess said, and he couldn't tell if she was joking or not. “She wouldn’t question if you chose to wear shorts.”

“Well, I won’t wear shorts. I can promise you that.”

“Did Ellie tell you about dinner tomorrow night?”

He furrowed his brow, said, “No, she didn’t.”

“Cat’s coming over,” Tess said. “It’s a _meet the parents_ type deal. You better behave.”

Flustered, he reached for the first normal question he could ask, wondered aloud, “What’re we going to make?”

“We’re picking up barbecue.” She patted his shoulder twice, trying to reassure him. “Grilling some corn. Maria has that baked beans recipe. Oh, and Cat’s a vegetarian, but we’ve got all that lettuce.”

What did she mean by _meet the parents?_ For one thing, Tess and Joel weren’t Ellie’s parents, and for another, they already knew Cat well enough. She worked with Tess in the gardens most days and kept to herself, listening to cassettes on her Walkman, staring at others blankly when they spoke to her. He didn’t like Cat because Cat acted like a teenager but had the added disgrace of tattoos. He didn’t think Cat was a good influence on Ellie, but whenever he mentioned that, Tess would call him old and tell him that he was being small-minded. Still, he didn’t like how Ellie was around Cat. He didn’t like watching her throw caution to the wind. _It’s good for her,_ Tess had told him countless times. _She can finally let go and relax a little. Be a normal kid. We have to let her._ But normal kids didn’t get tattoos at sixteen, right? He wasn’t being ridiculous. He swore that he wasn’t being ridiculous.

“If you make even one comment about her tattoos,” Tess said, “I swear to-”

“I won’t,” he said, “but you have to admit-”

“Joel.”

She pushed her hand over his mouth, forcing him to stop talking. 

“Behave,” she insisted, and he closed his eyes, submitted.

* * *

She turned off the alarm but curled back up with him, not wanting to go out for patrols. Couldn’t they sleep in instead? But they would have both Saturday and Sunday off for - and he hated to use this phrase - _wedding purposes,_ so they could tolerate a few more days, couldn’t they? Then again, he really wanted to stay in bed.

Pulling his arm over her body, she forced him to hold her, then leaned against him, snuggled. Her tank top exposed so much skin, and her legs were bare. At least their bedroom wasn’t as humid as it had been last week, unbearably hot to the point that they stuck to the edges of their bed, not wanting to feel each other’s body heat. Holding her close, he brushed his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck, breathed her in. He’d missed being able to hold her.

Since they returned from their vacation in the national forest, she’d started reaching for him more. After dinner, they would sit on the couch together, and she would wrap her arms around him on purpose, no longer leaning her head on his shoulder and pretending that she was just tired. No, she wanted him to touch her, and she wanted to touch him, and now, she stroked his bare chest, her shirt riding up. They would curl up like this after the alarm sounded, would risk lateness because, in the end, five more minutes wouldn’t cause any problems. He liked being one of the first things she saw when she woke up. He liked how he would open his eyes and see the back of her head, dark hair strewn against her pillow, one of her lithe arms reaching out to turn off the alarm; then, she would turn over and face him, short lashes, messy brows, bright eyes, the scars on her face. She wasn’t a morning person, but she woke up looking bright. He wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her there until someone knocked on their front door, demanding to know why they were so late.

She dipped two fingers beneath the waistband of his underwear. Oh, that was a bad idea.

“Everyone’s gonna gossip anyway,” she said, and, well, why would he have made her stop? He didn’t want to go on the patrols either. No, he wanted to stay in bed with her, kissing her collarbone as she told him a story he already knew, massaging her shoulders while she scoffed that his freckles were coming out, he really needed to cover up when he worked in the sun. Had they known how to relax, they would have been the types to spend all day in bed, but instead, they needed to be somewhere, and they were going to be late. 

Oh, they were going to be _gloriously_ late. She tried and failed to be quieter in the mornings, not that she was ever loud, but he liked the inhibition, how she would cover her mouth with her hand, press her face against skin. Less talking, they never bothered with feedback in the morning, and he wanted to touch her everywhere. He went to kiss her neck but hesitated, not wanting to put a bruise there. Her palms against his shoulderblades, her body beneath his, he wondered what would happen if they abandoned their routes altogether. Would anyone notice? Yes, people would notice, but would anyone really care?

When they finally headed out of the house, Tess’s half-up bun was falling apart, and Joel was wearing shorts because he hadn’t been able to find a pair of clean pants quickly enough. Around town, there were little posters hung, a sweeping invitation to the wedding on Saturday, all welcome, no gifts, ceremony followed by reception. He couldn’t remember if a seven-in-the-evening wedding was uncommon in the old world, but he was certain that _wedding_ was an overstatement for this event. Though there would be vows, those vows were generic, the same ones Maria had used for every couple in town, and neither Joel nor Tess wanted to say anything more specific, more personal. There would be no aisle to walk down, no bouquet because Tess had vetoed that early on, no _our song_ or first dance or dinner or bridal party or flower toss. Instead, there would be a brief ceremony followed by music and dancing. They wouldn’t have a cake because Tess had thought that would be tacky, and flour was hard to come by anyway. 

Walking past others in the settlement, he felt as if they were being stared at, then wondered why he felt paranoid until he overhead the conversations. _Really? Them? I thought they were related. No, they met while they were both traveling, Ellie’s hers but not his. No, I heard the opposite, Ellie’s his, and they met Tess in the Boston QZ. No, I swear to you, they’re siblings, that’s why they live together._ He would’ve laughed had it all not seemed so pointless, just town gossip, everyone dumbfounded that two people who sometimes kissed in public might tie the knot. Though he’d known that they looked odd to others, called themselves _partners_ but never elaborated, it felt ridiculous that not everyone understood why they lived together, sat together at the bar, patrolled in pairs. They hadn’t given an explanation, but to him, what they were to each other was obvious. They were inseparable. How was that so hard to understand?

Thankfully, they weren’t the last to arrive at the stables, and Victor, the kind stablehand, had already saddled the horses, somehow managing to read their minds. Tess thanked him as she took Echo’s reins, as Joel led Winnie out of the barn, and because the questions were inevitable, Victor started asking.

“Saw the flyers,” he said, following them through the barn. “I think congratulations are due.”

“Not ‘til Saturday,” Tess said, patting Echo’s neck. Though Tess insisted on riding Echo during patrols, the horse remained skittish after the attack, needed a little encouragement before leaving town. “You should come by.”

“Probably everyone’s gonna come by,” Victor said, laughing lightly. “I’ve heard a couple theories already. I think there might be bets taken.”

Tess furrowed her brow but looked curious, feeling superior to whatever ridiculous theories the neighbors had had but wanting to know the theories anyway. 

“What theories?” she asked. 

Smiling, Victor said, “My favorite is that this is all a performance intended to distract us from crews rewiring our electrical systems.”

Tess shook her head, gave, “You know how it is. Most complicated explanation is always the truth.”

They were the last out of the gate, assigned to the upper part of the resort, thankfully somewhere sparse. Though Tess had been back on patrols since the end of April, Joel still winced when they were assigned a route near a horde, somewhere infected tended to hide. She still could shoot perfectly well, but at first, he’d watched her hesitantly pull her gun when they heard a noise, and she shot infected with a kind of resignation, a fear that wouldn’t go away once the enemy was down. She’d let go of that fear over time, but she still startled when they went out, still thumbed her gun in its holster and swallowed hard. After the attack, she’d been afraid in all directions, and he knew that that fear would stick around for a long time. 

At least Tess liked riding these trails. While he struggled through the angled incline, she moved with her horse in a way he would never master, her weight shifting in time, two minds becoming one. Echo startled at the sight of snakes and rabbits but trusted Tess without question. Though the day was hot, the humidity had gone down, making the ride pleasant. No infected, no signs of stragglers, no footprints in the mud. By the time they got to the hotels at the upper part of the resort, he felt confident that they would be back home shortly, the logbook marked with _all clear_ in her handwriting. Easy day, thank goodness.

“We should look around,” Tess said, tying Echo’s reins to a tree near the resort’s cabins. “Rich people places. Sometimes, there’s good loot.”

“Or there’s just money and jewelry and other useless stuff.”

He found another fir and tied Winnie up, petting the old girl’s mane, silently saying _be back soon_ as he followed Tess toward one of the cabins. Back when the resort still functioned, these cabins had gone at a premium, for residents could snap on their skis outside of their front doors and glide on over to the gondola, no lift tickets necessary; only the most affluent vacationers could afford these places, and sometimes, patrols would find puffy coats with fur-lined hoods, warm clothes for winter, inside of these buildings. With four cabins in a makeshift square against the wildflower-covered trails that people once skied down, the cabins offered little privacy, but there was no denying the ease, the view of the mountains, the vacationer’s experience. The front door of the nearest cabin was rotting, its lock no good anymore; Tess rammed the door, and the wood splintered apart, crumbled in. 

Turning to face him, she nodded toward the other cabins, said, “Go see if you can get into those.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, then climbed up the overgrown hill to the next cabin, its deck’s wood splintering, woodpecker marks left in the tinder. Money never lasted in the world they now lived in.

This door opened with ease, the place having been looted long ago, but there were still family pictures, two blonde children taking ski lessons, a pair of bland parents posing for a Christmas card. The beds were unmade, though he didn’t know if they’d been slept in last by the family who once lived here or by squatters making their way to another place. Had the sheets not grown moldy, they would’ve been lovely to sleep on, high thread count, nice as could be. He opened the closet: a cocktail dress, a men’s pullover wool sweater with only one moth-eaten patch under the arm, two pairs of dress slacks. Tess could patch the sweater, couldn’t she? And if it didn’t fit him, he figured Ellie would like it, those slouchy outfits she wore in the winter, finding a personal style for the first time in her life. Maybe he could get a pair of boots for her too, then convince her that high-tops were _not_ acceptable winter footwear. Maybe-

He heard one gunshot and then another, a quick succession, two shots needed to be deadly. _Clickers,_ he thought. _Tess._

As he ran down to the other cabin, stepped over the crumbled door, he didn’t hear a fight, no more shots, but the silence only made him nervous. What had she found? A place that tightly locked, the infected must’ve been stuck there for years, no way out, running into walls and having no sense of direction. He didn’t want to go like that. Tess wouldn’t either, hadn’t back when she’d thought that would be her fate, but now, she knew she couldn’t go that way. Was it a relief or a pain to know of exactly one way she wouldn’t be able to die?

These cabins were all designed the same way, one main room with a fireplace, three bedrooms, a bath and a half-bath, and this one was torn at the seams, doors off their hinges, broken glass on the floor, a rotting stench coming from a place he couldn’t identify. The windows had been boarded up, casting the place in darkness. The silence around him felt eerie, the sound of his boots against glass shards making him wince.

“Tess?” he called, but she didn’t answer, so he went into the first bedroom, two skeletons in the bed, the sheets rotting in the dark, the windows covered with rotting curtains. The second bedroom held big suitcases, family in from out of town, people who had left quickly when the infection came. Before he went into the last bedroom, he paused for a moment, wondered if he wanted to see what was inside. _What if she needs your help?_ he thought, then forced himself to enter before he could realize that she hadn’t needed his help in Teton Village at all.

The third bedroom had been decorated with fading coloring pages on the walls, pink sheets on the bed, a dresser fit for a child in the corner. Tess slumped against the peeling wallpaper, her head between her knees, her gun to her left. The body next to the bed was large and overgrown, years of infection, the face worn away and the clothes stretched and tattered around its limbs. He didn’t want to piece together the story. He didn’t want to think about rotting food and suicidal parents and how sometimes it seemed easier that the children didn’t understand what was going on. Who had gotten sick first? Had the parents fallen ill, then swallowed drain cleaner and hoped the child would be saved by the relatives who abandoned the place early on? Or had the child been sick, and instead of damning the girl, the parents damned themselves? 

But he didn’t want to know. He sat down next to her, trying not to touch her. She pressed the heels of her hands against her face, breathing deeply despite the rotting odor, trying to calm down.

“Did you find anything?” she asked, her tone uncomfortably even. She was trying so hard to maintain her composure. Though he wished she knew that it was okay to let go, he understood that awful feeling, the treacherous sensation of knowing that speaking at all would make him cry. He knew how it felt to find safety in denying an emotion its power. 

“A sweater,” he gave. He wanted to make this easy for her. “No ammunition, no medications.”

“Look through here,” she said, still hunched over, her eyes closed. “It’s been locked up for a long time. Should be something.”

“Tess, everything’s rotted,” he said, but really, he was making excuses; he wanted to leave this cabin as soon as possible. “I don’t think we’ll find anything.”

“Please, just do it.”

She sounded desperate, painfully desperate. Against his instincts, he nodded, stood up, went to the little drawers and looked through. There were socks, shirts, all basic small things that the town never had enough of, and with a run through the laundry, they’d all be good as new. But he folded each garment knowing that this girl had suffered. The body didn’t look like an adult's, but it would never have fit these clothes. How long had she been like that, in the advanced stages of infection, trapped in this place filled with ghosts? He wasn’t going to let Tess carry any of these clothes, so he folded them all as small as he could, little pairs of pants and dresses, and shoved them into his bag as far as he could manage. Then, the bedrooms for the adults. They had winter coats, nice ones, and for a moment, he remembered their smuggling days, how they were the ones in the QZ with the most valuable things, stolen kevlar vests and morphine, ration cards exchanged for what money would never buy again. When they returned to town, they would have power. They would have a kind of influence because they had these things, warm things, things that made the difference between surviving and dying in the winter. Leather gloves, a cashmere sweater, these things would make them rich.

But they would give all of these things to Maria. Even though the gloves were nice, he absolutely never wanted to wear them. No, he wanted to forget about this place altogether. He was thankful for the boarded-up windows, for the place was too dark for him to see the colors, the designs, and he would forget these things with ease, see someone around town wearing these gloves and not give them a second thought. And boots, trendy boots, they had saddle-bags that would fit these boots, and maybe they weren’t a good material, but they would let Maria determine if they were fit for the town or not. They would do what they were known for, take stolen goods from one place to another, and then, they would change the narrative. This time, they weren’t influential because of what they had. This time, they cursed these things, let them go with ease, and cowered back to their home, trying not to think about the tragedy they left behind. At least now others would be warm because of the tragedy that had come to this family. At least these awful deaths would have some kind of meaning.

He hated giving pain meaning, but Tess didn’t. Tess wanted her pain to be worth something, so he would look through the house on her behalf. Once he was done, he returned to the bedroom, and she was standing up now, taking a deep breath, stilling for a moment, then forcing the air from her lungs, tamping down the emotions. She was ready to go home.

“There were coats,” he said. “And gloves. We’ll bring them to Maria.”

She nodded, her gaze down, then headed back outside toward the horses.

* * *

They had to pass by the gardens to return home. Though Tess typically stayed there while he headed home for his steel-toed boots and tool belt, she said good morning to the gardeners and walked right by that day, silently going home with him. Most of the gardeners overlooked the difference, but Cat, with her two floral sleeve tattoos lining her bare arms and her dark hair cut to her shoulders, furrowed her brow and lifted her headphones from her head, looking back and forth at the others, wondering why no one else questioned the change. But the change came and went, and Cat shrugged it off, put her headphones back on, pressed play on her Walkman, the volume loud enough for Joel to hear from afar. See? He had reasons to dislike Cat. She listened to music that was too loud. That would damage her hearing. Ellie had been in enough gunfights already; she needed to preserve her hearing, and if she kept hanging out with Cat, she would be deaf by the time she was thirty. Not that being deaf was a bad thing, Jenny across town was deaf, and everyone had picked up words in sign language from her, and she made the best pumpkin pies. There was nothing wrong with being deaf, but still, he wanted Ellie to stay safe, and loud music and tattoos weren’t safe. He wasn’t being overbearing. He swore he wasn’t being overbearing. 

Tess opened the front door for him, let him follow her in. As she took off her pack, he saw that her shirt was sticking to her with sweat. 

“Would you mind waiting a moment?” she asked, heading for the stairs and not looking at him. “I’d like to change out of these clothes.”

“Okay,” he said, feeling awkward.

She hadn’t spoken since the cabins, had only nodded to Victor in the stables when they brought the horses back, so now, hearing her voice made him uncomfortable. Though they were rid of the morning, the clothes they’d found already passed off to Maria, the logbooks all marked, he still winced when he recalled the smell of that place, the boarded-up windows, the bodies. At eight in the morning, he was ready for this day to end.

When she came back downstairs, she was wearing a tee shirt and jeans, the knees worn down. She’d started using kneeling pads in the gardens, and if he laughed at that and called her old, she would give him a death glare. Motioning to the couch, she silently asked him to sit down, so he sat down, a foot of space between them, her hands folding on her lap. She looked serious. She looked as if she were at a bank asking for a loan she didn’t think she would be given. Oh, she wanted to talk about it. She wanted to talk about it? Though he’d expected that she would want a hug, maybe a chance for him to walk her to work, maybe just to not be alone, he hadn’t thought that she would want to talk about their morning. Would she ask something of him? Sweat formed on his brow; he wasn’t prepared for this.

“We both know that this isn’t the first time I’ve...lost it,” she said. 

She was staring down at her lap, not looking at him. He wanted her to stop talking, if not for her own benefit then for his. No, he understood already. He knew what she meant. She didn’t need to say anything out loud if she didn’t want to. But no, she wanted to talk about it, or maybe she didn’t want to talk about it at all but felt she should. Did she feel forced? No, she took a deep breath. She was trying something new. She wanted to see how this would feel.

“It was a mistake for me to go in there alone,” she said with resignation. He wondered if she’d been mentally beating herself up over that decision for the whole ride home. “We can handle ourselves, but it’s just plain stupid to go into an unknown area alone. Next time, we’re sticking together, if that’s alright with you.”

“Yeah, of course,” he said, nodding, maybe nodding a little too much. 

“And I didn’t mean to snap at you,” she said. “I’m...not good at dealing with this.”

He nodded again, and for a moment, she met his gaze, then cast her eyes down again. Though she wanted to know what he was thinking, she also really didn’t want to know.

“But I’m trying,” she said. “I promise that I’m trying.”

“I know you are,” he said, then reached out, took one of her hands in his, forced her to relax. 

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. From here, they could hear the little bit of commotion in the gardens, people recounting their nights to friends, asking about soil acidity, wondering if the compost had been brought in yet. Today, Ellie was working with the farm animals. Her favorite day was when they got to shear the sheep, but for now, brushing the horses’ manes would have to do.

“Thank you for looking on my behalf,” she said, then met his gaze with the same earnestness she’d had when Bill had given them morphine for the screaming woman in their apartment building, a tibial fracture of some kind, something the soldiers hadn't wanted to deal with. On that finally quiet night, they’d felt relief as if they’d been driving in a downpour and had started to go through a long tunnel, no more rain against their windshield.

“Anytime,” he said, then squeezed her hand. 

Though he knew Tommy and the others would pick on him for being late, and though he knew that wasting daylight with their current project was a bad idea, he still waited for her to get up first, then followed her out, walked her to the gardens. Someone needed her urgently, a strawberry-related emergency, but she told them to hold on for a moment, she would be there in a second, and she reached for Joel's hand, pulled him back toward her and kissed him chastely, just a peck on the lips, a see-you-later kiss. Then, she said _don’t be late for dinner_ and went back to the current emergency, and he stood there awkwardly, willing himself not to blush. 

Tommy and the crew were _definitely_ going to make fun of him, but as he walked to where they were building, he didn’t mind, not even a little.

* * *

He liked taking out the grill-pan. They had fresh ears of corn; Tess shucked the corn, then brought the husks into a pot of water while he put the ears on the grill. In hope of keeping the heat out, they’d opened up all of the windows in the house, and they had barbecue and baked beans keeping warm in the oven. Tess had put on jean shorts. He really liked those shorts.

“Now, you’re not going to make _any_ comments about,” Tess arched her neck, went through the mental list, “her tattoos, vegetarianism...art…”

“Okay, but-“

The tip of her pointer finger landed in the center of his chest, her face stern.

“No _buts_ , Joel,” she said. “Tonight, you’re being nice. You’re not ruining this for her.”

He furrowed his brow, asked, “For Cat?”

Rolling her eyes, Tess said, “Don’t be dense.”

But he’d misunderstood, genuinely misunderstood, so as Tess went to the grill-pan, used his trusty tongs to flip the corn, he thought about asking what she meant, but he looked at her arms instead. She’d been working out a lot, and she was wearing a tank top. She was always wearing a tank top. Why did she keep wearing tank tops? He was sweating, the open windows weren’t helping. He watched the way her muscles flexed and relaxed as she flipped the next ear of corn, then set the tongs down, leaned her palms on the marble countertops. There were freckles on her wrists. He _really_ liked those shorts.

“You’re acting weird,” she said, heading to the fridge, taking out their greens. “Stop that.”

Trying to regain his composure, he leaned against the counter, crossed his arms, said, “I’m sorry about that.”

With spare lumber from construction last year, he’d carved them a wooden salad bowl, full of knots and useless for any other project. He'd sanded the thing down for days, leaving the surface shimmering and soft; she poured spinach into the bowl, took the tomatoes from the counter, furrowed her brow as she searched for a knife. 

“What’s the big deal anyway?” Joel asked. “It’s in the second drawer.”

“Thanks,” she said, opening the drawer, finally finding the knife, “and you know why it’s a big deal.”

“No, I really-“

“How big should I cut these?”

She held up two heirloom tomatoes, first pickings, she always snagged the best food in the gardens when they wanted to celebrate. Shrugging, he held up his thumb and pointer finger, maybe this big? She nodded, took the cutting board from its place near the stove, started cutting up the tomatoes. From that angle, she looked _really good_ in those shorts.

“Maria stopped by the gardens this afternoon,” Tess said, her wrist wavelike as she cut through the tomatoes. Jesse’s father had taught her proper knife skills, the kitchen kind, not the kind she already knew, so now, she cut carrots and zucchinis with ease while he struggled through mincing an onion. “Asked if there was any music we wanted for, you know, after.”

“After what?”

She closed her eyes in annoyance, said, “I’m really not in the mood.”

“Did you give her any?”

“No,” Tess said, returning to her tomatoes, “but I’m passing this along to you, in case there’s any you want to give her.”

“I take it she wants us to pick a song.”

“Joel.”

“You know,” he said, taunting her but only a little, “ _a song._ ”

“We agreed that we wouldn’t do that.”

“Not even a little?”

“Joel.”

She was holding a knife. Maybe this was a bad idea.

“There’s that one that you like,” he said, heading into the living room.

They’d brought the record player downstairs, the bedroom too hot in the summer, the crossbreeze downstairs making the living room more comfortable for winding down. Back when she was still off of the patrols, he’d found a record aptly labeled as _Love Songs,_ and he’d taken it because he’d been feeling a certain kind of way. She liked Patsy Cline, and weeks ago, when the weather first turned hot, they sat together on the couch, bodies tangled together, the windows open wide, finally, a breeze coming through, their wispy curtains rising in the air, and “You Belong to Me” played on the record while she ran her fingers through his hair. They wouldn’t turn the lights on for fear of warming the house; they were together in the dark, silent and alone, the song and her hands the only things grounding them. 

He pulled the record from its sleeve, dropped the needle down, listened to the end of “You’ll Never Know,” he found Vera Lynn’s music creepy, and when Tess heard the first few notes of the next song, she laughed in the kitchen. He heard her put the knife down, no more tomatoes. There was a breeze coming through the house. Her hair was half-back, the curled tendrils rising in the wind as he returned to the kitchen. Against all odds, she was smiling.

“You’re not gonna convince me,” she said, giving him a look, “but nice try.”

“C’mon,” he said, his palm at the small of her back, tugging her toward him, “it’s simple.”

Her palms were against his chest. She looked wary.

“Just take my hand,” he took hers in his and held their hands together, a cotillion, they’d done the same at the twice-a-year dances, he’d had to lead each time but they still danced together in the end. “Find the right rhythm. Not so bad.”

She closed her eyes. Her lashes were so dark, so thin and soft against her skin. With all of the summer sun, her freckles had come out, her face darker than usual. She looked warmer, livelier, her winter paleness gone. He wondered if she felt warmer too.

“Not so bad without an audience,” she said, then relaxed against him.

They swayed together, not even on-beat. Thankfully, she’d taken the corn off of the grill-pan, left it plated and ready for dinner. Ellie and Cat would be there soon, but for now, the town was quiet around them, and though he could barely hear the music, the sound didn’t matter. They both already knew this song, had heard it countless times before and knew the lyrics and could remember listening to it together, sitting on the couch while praying for rain, winding down before bed during the colder months, holding this new-to-him record in his hands while she looked at the sleeve and called him a sap. 

She thumbed his cheek, forcing him out of his mind. The song was over, the record in the divot before the next began playing, and she kissed him as Etta James came on, her body warm against his, her nose pressing into his cheek. She was on tiptoe. Had she always kissed him on tiptoe? Closing his eyes, he held her there, warm, alive, his, actually his, and he wasn’t being old-fashioned, no, she wanted to be his, and he wanted to be hers, something mutual, something agreed. He knew not to ask her to say certain words, but she’d agreed, had even brought the topic up herself. Yes, this was better without an audience, but she’d agreed to have an audience at all. That was something big. 

When the front door opened, she quickly pulled away from him, blushing a little, and he smiled, his Tess blushing in embarrassment, not wanting to be caught kissing. So, no audience. They didn’t need an audience. If anything, the audience was meant for proving a point and nothing more. He would give Maria his Elvis records, if only because they were fun to dance to, but he’d keep this one to himself.

“Are you serious?” Ellie called from the front door, taking off her shoes angrily, walking into the kitchen angrily. Tess leaned against a counter a few feet away, putting both figurative and literal space between them. No, they had not just been kissing, what would make someone assume that they had? “You didn’t even bother telling me.”

Joel furrowed his brow as Ellie came into the kitchen, asked her, “About what?”

As if she had their _wanted_ posters from the QZ, Ellie held up one of the wedding announcement flyers, something criminal, something very, very bad.

“Everyone thought this was a joke,” she said, “and I fucking believed them, Joel!”

He looked over at Tess; she was biting her lip, and though a stranger would have thought she was anxious, he knew that that look meant she was trying not to laugh.

“Not a joke,” he gave. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ellie asked, her earnestness making him bite his cheeks to keep from smiling. “It’s kind of a big deal.”

Shrugging, he gave, “Not really.”

She looked to Tess, asked, “Did he put you up to this?”

At that, Tess couldn’t hold back any longer, so she laughed, shook her head, said, “I think it was technically my idea.”

“Technically Maria’s,” he chimed in.

“Technically Maria’s,” Tess agreed.

“You could’ve, like, given me a warning or something,” Ellie said. “For real, everyone had so many questions, and they thought _I_ could answer them. And here I am, knowing even less than they do!”

“What questions did they have?” Joel asked, crossing his arms, a little too excited to know. 

“We’ve got a mental list going,” Tess said . “I’m curious if you've heard anything we haven't.”

“ _Guys._ ”

“My favorite so far was that we’re trying to cover up that we’re siblings,” Joel said.

“I’m choosing to ignore you,” Ellie said to him, then turned to Tess and added, “and Cat’s just finishing up in the gardens. She’ll be here soon.”

Furrowing her brow, Tess asked, “Anything I should know about?”

Ellie shook her head, said, “Just chores, I think. You cooked for her, right?”

“Baked beans,” Tess gave, “no bacon.”

“Great,” Ellie said, crumpling up the flyer in her hands, an anxious gesture. “Yeah, great. Cool, cool, cool.”

Motioning to the dining room, Joel asked, “Would you like to set the table?”

Ellie perked up, nodded, then headed for the cabinets. She knew where all of their dishware was from her many thefts of their plates, all of which had been returned dirty to their sink. Sometimes, she even snuck a mug or two or her own in there for good measure. Though he knew he ought to check on the water system he’d built for her out in the garage, he doubted he would actually find problems with it in the end, her dishes coming inside not because she couldn’t wash them herself. While Ellie set down the forks and knives, Tess brought the plated corn to the table, then went into the oven for the meat and baked beans.

When Cat knocked on their front door, Ellie let her inside while Tess and Joel stood together in the dining room, trying to look like the hospitable hosts they’d never been.

“Moment of truth,” Tess said, then gave him a look that said _behave._


	10. Never Cursed (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one also got a bit long so it's chopped in half

Cat’s parents had both been pilots, her father in the Air Force and her mother working in scenic flights near the base they lived on in Alaska. Apparently, one of the garages at the edge of town housed the biplane Cat’s mother used to fly, the fuel long-gone, the thing dragged by seven people and hidden so that the town would seem less threatening. Could they fly the thing if they managed any fuel? At the dinner table, Cat told them that she didn’t know, but her mother said flying was a kind of muscle memory, checklists stuck in her mind, repeated instructions becoming instincts. Her mother could fly without thinking, for being forced to think in a time of crisis only got you killed. The fuel, in the end, was an inconvenience more than a problem. 

But, no, they didn’t have fuel, so there was no use in wondering. And where would they go in the end? The last trip had been from outside of Calgary to Jackson, long-lost radio frequencies connecting the family to a Wyoming airport. Her father had died in service for the Fireflies, and someone in the settlement recognized his name, and the plane was tucked into an empty garage and kept a secret. And no one was allowed to tell anyone else, okay? That’s a secret. I shouldn’t have even told you. You’ve got to keep it a secret.

On the porch, Tess taught the girls how to make corn husk dolls, tie twine at a certain part, make a dress like this or separate for two legs like that. She’d soaked the husks to make them soft; the three sat on the porch and bent the husks into form, and when Ellie asked where Tess had learned to do this, Tess told her about Girl Scouts, and her brothers had been Boy Scouts, and Ellie asked why boys and girls had been separated, and Tess laughed, said that she’d had the same question. And Boy Scouts did far cooler things, her brothers had learned archery and backwoods skills while her troop, well, made dolls. The only edge that the girls had was that they sold cookies that had been popularized throughout the country. Ellie scrunched up her nose, told Tess not to joke around, but Cat laughed and nodded, saying that her mother used _thin mints_ as if it were a curse word even though she’d loved the cookies.

Tess insisted on sending Cat home with leftovers, some extra radishes from the harvest, all of the remaining baked beans. Of course, Cat said, no, no, she couldn’t take their food, but Tess forced their floral tupperware on the girl anyway. The floral print matched the tattoos on Cat’s arms. Begrudgingly, Joel thought that the pink orchids, though she was much too young to have them on her skin, were beautiful. Cat was a talented artist. See? He did have something nice to say about her. If Tess accused him of being intentionally mean, he would now have a defense.

“This is really nice,” Tess called from the bedroom while he brushed his teeth. Looking over, he saw her holding up the hunter green wool sweater he’d found in that cabin that hadn’t been cursed. She was wearing underwear and one of his shirts and nothing else. “Shame about the snag, though.”

“Figured you could cover it up,” he said with a mouth full of toothpaste. This stuff was new, handmade by one of the guys Tess worked with, and though he didn’t want to admit it, this stuff tasted awful.

He watched as she pulled the sweater on, trying it for size. Of course, it was much too big for her, but in the soft, nighttime lamplight of their bedroom, the color brought out her eyes. But, hey, wait, that was his sweater. _He_ had been the one to find that sweater. And she was wearing his shirt too, damn her. Didn’t she see that this was unfair? Maybe he could stretch out one of her tank tops in revenge, but, then again, he really didn’t want to wear one of her tank tops. Though they’d both been against receiving wedding gifts, he almost wished he could ask specifically for socks, and also ask that Tess never know about said socks.

“I think this is a wool-cashmere blend,” she said, then reached around to the back, could even read the tag while she still wore the sweater, it was that big on her. “Yeah, it is.”

“Hey,” he spat into the sink, “finders, keepers.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

She put the sweater into their laundry pile; he tried to think of hiding places.

“Seems like it’s gonna rain tomorrow,” she said as she climbed into bed.

He turned off his bedside lamp, went in to join her. 

“Maybe not tomorrow,” he gave. “No, tomorrow’s gonna be so humid it’ll drive us crazy. Maybe the day after too. And then, there’ll be a glorious rainstorm, and the heat will break.”

She furrowed her brow, turned to face him, said, “You seem so sure of yourself.”

“It’ll be clear and beautiful.”

“Okay?”

“Right in time for Saturday.”

She rolled her eyes, said, “Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

“Oh, promise I won’t.”

“Joel.”

Maybe she didn’t understand what weddings were, but then again, how couldn’t she? She’d been nineteen when the outbreak began, not five, and then again, even five-year-olds back then had known that marriage meant commitment. _I’m committing to you for life, okay?_ she seemed to say. _Don’t make it weird._

“I just think,” he said, and yeah, maybe he was being a little smug about it, “that it would be nice if we had good weather.”

“The whole thing is going to be indoors.”

“Still.”

Tess huffed. 

“Goodnight, Joel.”

“Aren’t you even a little bit excited?”

“Goodnight, Joel!”

But when Cat had asked if the wedding was real or not, the question tentative and polite, genuine curiosity that she tried to cover up, Tess had smiled. That was something.

* * *

He’d been right about the two days of heat. Hot, humid weather, the sun beating down tirelessly, and he and his crew needed to put a new roof on one of the houses. The back of his neck burned, so Tess forced him to wear her sunhat from the gardens, but the brim kept slipping over his face, sweat dripping into his eyes. Though she offered him one of her headbands to absorb the sweat, he knew he couldn’t accept such an offer, so instead, he kept rubbing his forehead, pushing the hat up, coming home with dirt on his face. She made him shower as soon as he came inside, and because the house was hardly any cooler, he needed to shower again before bed.

But the rain came on Friday night, the heat finally breaking, and they had to lock the windows, go into the attic to check for leaks. She’d covered the plants in the gardens, even brought in their little tomato plants from out back, the laundry room full of pots. When they went to bed, they pulled the blankets up high, the house dark and cooling down, the two of them huddling in bed, pillows close. Their legs were tangled, arms crushed together because where else were they supposed to rest them? And their faces were close enough that the tips of their noses almost touched.

They were taking Saturday and Sunday off, no patrols, their kind of honeymoon. At noon, they would need to help set up the church, hang lights and sweep the floors and arrange the records, but this morning, they didn’t need to do anything. They could stay inside. The rain had calmed, just a little shower, just enough to hear. As the rest of the town woke up, headed out for the day, started on their projects and joined up for patrols, she moved closer to him in bed, her head on his pillow, the blankets up to their chins. He wondered if there had ever been a better day for sleeping in.

At ten, the rain slowed. She’d picked blueberries yesterday, saved them for breakfast. Two slices of bread in the toaster, butter in a glass jar, he fried eggs while she buttered toast. Out of bed, she needed a sweatshirt to keep warm, but she hadn’t put on pants yet. She leaned back against the counter, thighs dimpling, and chewed a piece of toast while he cooked, and when he looked over at her, she looked different from how she had when he first met her in the QZ. Less blood on her face, definitely, but she’d gained weight, fat and muscle from being able to eat properly, legs filling out her jeans, and her face was brighter. In the QZ, they never ate breakfast, they certainly never had butter, and they’d had one year during which they swore they would name the apartment’s mice, little buggers, eating everything they had that wasn’t canned. But here, they kept bread on the counter, oats and dried corn in jars on their shelves, yogurt and milk and butter in the fridge. They had beef in the freezer. They weren’t going to starve.

But it still felt religious to watch her eat toast with butter. She nudged his knee with hers; she wanted the yolks runny, he needed to pay attention. The blueberries were in a bowl on the dining room table already. Outside, the gardeners were taking covers off of the plants, and they ought to move the tomatoes back outside, but, no, breakfast first, he plated eggs and toast, headed into the dining room. She pulled open the curtains, let what little light there was in, then sat alongside him at the table, fork and knife, bowl of blueberries between them. Looking out the windows, he wondered if they might see lightning.

Maria had insisted that she do Tess’s hair, and Tess had begrudgingly agreed, so he would spend the afternoon alone, no business to do, nothing left except some waiting. Though he wasn’t looking forward to the waiting, he liked even less the prospect of Tess trimming his hair before they went to help set up. Of course, Maria had offered, but, no, he didn't trust Maria to leave any beard behind. After breakfast, he dawdled while washing the dishes, took extra time on the skillet, and he could hear Tess opening the drawer where she kept the shears, dreaded things. Even back in the QZ, she’d hated what she called his _mountain man_ look, an overgrown beard and bangs that covered his eyes, looking unkempt no matter how well he kept clean, and once a month, she insisted upon trimming his hair. Wasn’t that reasonable? He didn’t understand why she was so obsessed, and, really, he didn't care about how long his hair was. But that morning, once the dishes were washed and she’d finally put some pants on, she pulled a dining room chair up to the one he sat on, brought their one - incredibly small, he might add - kitchen apron over his head, brushed her fingers down his face. He was getting a trim whether he wanted one or not.

“You know how much I hate this,” he said as she squinted, angled the shears. 

“Stop talking,” she said, “or else I'll mess up.”

“If it’s a mess, will that prove my point?”

“Oh, shush.”

Back in the QZ, he used to cut the ends of her hair, one of few things she couldn’t do herself. Though he’d messed up so badly the first time that she looked at him with nothing but disdain for a week, he’d gotten better, managing an even line, letting her little curls cover up his mistakes. By comparison, Tess was good at this. She could trim straight lines with ease, and somehow, she never made his beard patchy. However, the back of his head was another story, but, hey, it was the back of his head. No one would be looking at the nape of his neck, right? No one would see that she’d cut a little crooked. 

“All set,” she said, tapping his shoulder and then lifting the hair-covered apron over his head. “Mountain man.”

“You like it a little,” he said, scrubbing his face. He felt so strange every time he had a trim, so lightweight. “You gotta admit.”

“I don’t!” she said, heading out of the dining room. “But keep telling yourself that.”

* * *

Ellie’s sneakers had soaked through as she made her way to the barn. Before the rain, the cows had all been brought inside, and now, the field was a muddy mess. She winced as she headed inside; she really didn’t want to work today.

Though she liked the animals, especially the sheep, weird little fuckers, she hated having to muck stalls, milk cows, haul feed. No, she would rather herd the sheep - that was the fun part, especially if Louie the dog was helping her - or shoe the horses than wash the cows, scoop horse shit, or put down hay. Maybe she just didn’t like manual labor, but also, she was good at other stuff. She was plenty strong enough to carry grain out to the pastures. She wasn’t a wuss. But still, the thought of having to milk the cows this morning made her wince. Didn’t they already have enough milk in town? Maria had taught Tess and Joel her father’s recipe for yogurt, and that shit was so good, especially mixed with fresh strawberries. But they already had plenty of milk. The cows could go a day without milking, right? But now, they were already mooing when she met up with the rest of her work group; no one could take a day off, not ever. 

Same as usual, boiled buckets being handed out, wash your hands before and after milking, apply ointment if you see cracks. Now, making ointment, _that_ was a fun activity. Dina’s mother was super good with herbs, so she joined a group patrol Ellie had been on, foraged for medicinal plants, then asked Ellie to help with the cooking. By boiling wool in a special way, they could extract the sheep’s lanolin, a waxy substance used for lotions, and Dina’s mother brewed herbs into the lanolin, making a soft balm good for rough hands and, of course, udders. Throughout the day, Dina’s mother had taught Ellie about the herbs, usnea and echinacea to heal wounds, chamomile to calm. They put the warm mixture into jars they’d scavenged, and as the mixture cooled, it went from liquid to solid, fucking awesome. And then, Dina’s mother gave a jar to the farmers in return for the wool, another jar to Maria for medicinal purposes, and the rest were traded for throughout the settlement. Even Joel and Tess had a tiny jar in their bathroom; Ellie had caught Tess grabbing Joel’s hand and forcing balm down, winter cracks, bleeding knuckles, _don’t be an idiot, just put the lotion on your damn hands._

Making ointment had been _way_ more fun than milking. At least the cows were good company. She could say hello and have them moo back, and then, she could pretend they’d said something insulting and act offended. Though she wished her feet weren’t cold, at least today wasn’t so fucking hot, the humid heat finally breaking. Would rain ruin a wedding? She didn’t really know all that much about weddings, but it seemed just like one of the seasonal dances, so maybe the rain wouldn’t matter. And she had dibs on the front row pews because, well, _because,_ and Cat, Jesse, and Dina were going to join her there. She kind of wanted to ask Cat to draw the ceremony, whatever _the ceremony_ was, because it sounded important and like something worth remembering. Or maybe she should draw it herself, but then again, she wanted to pay attention. It wasn’t every day you got to see your...your Joel and Tess, like, do whatever this was. It wasn’t every day that Tess had an idea for something public that wasn’t a drinking contest or whatever.

She wanted to dance with Cat tonight. Tugging on the udders, the bucket starting to fill, she knew that she wanted to dance with Cat tonight. And not the kiddish stuff they’d done before, when it was the four of them not really knowing what they were doing and making fun of the slow songs. No, she wanted a slow song. That would be nice. Cat always said how repressed Ellie was, but she wasn’t repressed, was she? She just liked her privacy. And Joel liked his privacy too, so she wasn’t weird for that. But she did want to dance with Cat. They’d been together for, well, a while, and it felt right. Cat felt right. She really liked Cat. She liked when Cat taught her about planes and tattoos and anime. And Cat liked comic books too, except they weren’t comic books, they were manga, and though Ellie didn’t know what the difference was, she knew there was a difference nonetheless. And the books opened up backwards because they’d been written in Japanese originally, and before the outbreak, Cat’s mom had _loved_ going to Barnes and Noble - a bookstore - in Anchorage, for they'd had a _huge_ manga section, like fucking _huge,_ and since she usually flew herself home, she could buy as many as she pleased, no need to worry about suitcase weight. Oh, and _suitcase weight_ had been a thing that people worried about, because planes couldn’t take too much weight, so if your suitcase was too big, you had to pay extra, but also, you had to pay for the suitcase in the first place, so it was kind of a lose-lose. But Cat’s mother could fly. The plane in the garage had been painted red. There were only two seats. The propeller still spun if you pushed it. And that was how they’d found their way here, flying down from Calgary, which had been a city in Canada, and Alaska was smack-dab between Canada and Russia, how weird is that? The United States was one chunk of the continent, and then, there was Canada, and off to the left, still technically connected to the Canadian piece of the continent, was Alaska. She’d wondered why, back when she was still in school, but none of the teachers had answered her questions.

So, yeah, she wanted to dance with Cat, and at this point, she figured she would be fine, for everyone except Joel already knew. And, well, it wasn’t her fault that Joel couldn’t figure it out. She’d tried to tell him plenty of times, but he’d never really understood. Tess knew, at least. She wondered if Tess had known all along, but then again, it had seemed deliberate, the question of more when Ellie told Tess - not explicitly, but, like, _subtext_ \- about kissing Cat in the classroom. Back then, Ellie had watched Tess’s face change, the kind of recognition, and then, Tess asked a simple question, and Ellie gave a simple answer, and that was that. Though Joel seemed not to understand, Tess knew, and Tess even liked Cat, complimented her tattoos, asked to look at her art. And if Tess knew, wouldn’t Joel be okay with it? She’d lost herself in thought about this too often. Though she herself hadn’t understood the aversion - she hadn’t learned _marriage is between a man and a woman_ until she was ten, and even then, she and her classmates had laughed it off, for marriage was a frou-frou concept to them - she knew better than to think that people of Joel’s age were universally accepting. But Tess supported her, so wouldn’t Joel? But Tess was younger than Joel, kind of by a lot. And Tess had never talked about God either.

Maybe she should just tell him. _Hello, Joel! Cat and I are dating! We’re not just friends!_ But she didn’t want to give him a reason to hate Cat. But why would he hate Cat for dating her? She was starting to get a headache. This cow was done, so she said goodbye, picked up her bucket, headed to the next. She hated how often she had to wash her hands, her knuckles were always so sore afterward, and there were always lines for the sinks, but she knew they all needed to wash up in order to keep the milk safe to drink. Getting in line, she stood behind Maya, one of the women who worked with the cows every day.

“Ellie!” she said, then patted Ellie’s shoulder. She was nice, and really pretty in a _loves horses_ kind of way, and she always wore the same baseball cap, one for the Yankees, which was baseball, she knew that much. “Heard about your folks. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” she said awkwardly. She didn’t understand why someone would congratulate Joel and Tess for throwing a party, but, like, maybe Maya thought it would be a really great party?

“We haven’t had a wedding here in ages,” Maya said. 

Was that a bad thing? Ellie still didn’t understand the point of a wedding. Back in the day, weddings were a contract that let people bang and also pay less in taxes, and there were huge dresses and parties to celebrate that. Were taxes really that big of a deal? She wasn’t sure why people had wanted other people to know they were boning, but maybe it was just a _cultural thing,_ which was what Joel always said when she asked about the relevance of state lines and why people needed passports to get into other countries when their passports probably couldn’t be read by the people in those other countries. Like, if someone from Japan - where manga was from - went to Sweden - where Maria was from, but not really - then how could the passport reader person - she didn’t know what that position was called - figure out what the Japanese said? Like, the passport could full-on just say _butt muncher_ on it, and the passport guy would still be like, cool, okay, have fun in Sweden!

After washing her hands, she headed to the next cow, said hello again, the same process over and over. Her shoes squelched as she walked. Maybe Joel was right, she needed some boots or something, but she really, _really_ didn’t want to wear boots. Tess had said that, back in the day, there was a waterproofing substance her father would put on his work boots. Maybe that would work on Ellie’s high-tops? But it was probably super hard to find, and water would get in the holes for the laces anyway. Damn. 

Well, next cow. This was going to be a long morning. Did people wear nice clothes to weddings nowadays? Back in the day, yeah, but also, wedding dresses back then cost a ton, and Tess wasn’t going to wear a dress. A tank top and pants would be fine, right? And a different pair of shoes, definitely, ‘cause these ones were fucking soaked.

But then again, she wouldn’t mind soaked shoes if she was dancing with Cat while wearing them.

* * *

When Maria cut hair, her hands were steady, and she sectioned the strands out with a comb, then used her fingers to keep the shears level. In comparison, Joel held the scissors horizontally, squinted, and hoped for the best. Maybe Tess had made a mistake in having him continue to cut her hair after they arrived in Jackson.

“Your color is so pretty,” Maria said, piecing hair behind Tess’s ear. “You get highlights in the summer.”

Tess sat at the vanity in Tommy and Maria’s spare room, the room where she and Joel had slept together on their first shared night in Jackson. Back then, she’d had latent chills from her fever, chills she’d feared would never go away, and Joel had been alongside her, big and warm, a foreboding presence. She couldn’t avoid him. She’d wanted to ask what had happened in Salt Lake City, but she hadn’t really wanted to know. At that point, she’d just realized that she wasn’t going to die, and he’d come back to her in a strange, fragmented way, blood on his shirt, faltering when he saw her. She could remember the day he came back so clearly, the alarms in the settlement, Maria leading her outside because they all knew who had come back, and he reunited with Tommy first, Maria hugging Ellie in consolation, and then, Joel looked at her, and his face changed. When he’d last seen her, she’d been far gone enough that Maria - and Tess respected her for this - hadn’t been sure if the settlement could afford to waste antibiotics on her. But one dose of penicillin had been given to her, and somehow, she’d pulled through, and there Joel was, looking haggard and exhausted and scared, and he saw her and then changed. No one had ever looked at her that way before, and though movies and books had taught her that that kind of look was one of mind-bending, show-stopping love, a love that should make her swoon, she’d smiled back at him and instead felt afraid.

She’d sat at this vanity while he slowly paced the room, a standoff over a queen-sized bed. She wanted to sleep next to him but didn’t want to sleep next to him. They never spoke, of course they never talked about it, but they both understood nonetheless. She was wearing Maria’s clothes because she hadn’t managed any of her own yet. She was dead, at least to herself, maybe even to him. She wanted to be held, but she didn’t want to be held, but she didn’t want to want to be held, but she knew she should want to be held. Maria had given her white flannel pajamas with a seashell print, and Tess had felt childish and awkward wearing them though she doubted Joel even noticed the pattern in the end.

But she let him hold her. When she went to him that night, silent bodies in a borrowed bedroom, white sheets she thought their auras might stain, she let him hold her because she thought he wanted to hold her, and because she thought she should want to be held. She could think of three examples of romance: her parents, though that was a stretch; the two Australian teenagers from that mermaid show she loved growing up; and the dogs from _Lady and the Tramp,_ specifically the meatball scene. Had they been eating spaghetti, she would’ve known what to do, but they’d been in bed together, and they didn’t make sense in a real house. No, they made sense in a shitty apartment that oftentimes lacked running water, and they made sense sweaty, bloodied, stuck. They would huddle for warmth, sure, or they would cozy up because it was a scientific fact that humans needed some kind of contact in order to survive, but they wouldn’t hold each other because they wanted to. And she hated the word _cuddling,_ it was too close to _coddling_ and made her think of babies and being too young to understand. Still, she cuddled him that night, and the whole time, she’d been uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t describe. She hadn’t disliked it, but it hadn’t felt as good as she’d thought it would. Instead, there were arms and legs, and her pajama bottoms started riding up, and she didn’t know how to ask him to let go when she got too warm. Was that all romance was, some goal she thought she might never meet? She slept alongside him wondering what he was thinking, then cursing herself for expecting him to think about her after all he’d gone through.

But, yes, the vanity. She liked this vanity, wondered why Maria had put it in the rarely used guest room instead of in her own bedroom. At some point, Maria must’ve painted the desk and tops of the mirrors white, for the paint looked fresh and crisp, the knobs on the drawers black in contrast. This whole bedroom was painted white, with a white bedspread tucked tight, hospital corners, and an oak bedframe and closet adding the only pops of color. When she first stayed here, before she and Joel had a house of their own, she’d looked in the closet and found Maria’s passport, old pictures of her father’s and grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s homesteads, spare linens and coats for the winter, photos of Tommy as a boy. To her right, there was a window that looked out on the town, puddles in the streets, people talking to their neighbors. Tess stared at her reflection in the mirror while Maria stood behind her, sectioned off her hair, and trimmed.

“Joel took my hat,” Tess said, reaching for an explanation, a point of conversation. She wasn’t sure if she didn’t like compliments about her appearance or if she’d just never been taught how to respond to them. “His neck burned in the sun.”

“What is it with men and sun?” Maria said, shaking her head. “I tell my idiot husband to cover up, and he ignores me, and then, he comes home asking me to put aloe on his back. Yeah, right.”

“My brothers used to think that sunscreen was feminine.”

“How does that even make sense?”

Tess laughed, said, “I have no idea.”

Maria met Tess’s gaze in the mirror, asked, “You just wanted the ends done, right?”

“Yeah, just.”

“And you don’t want it put up all special?”

Tess winced. No, she did _not_ want it put up, but she wasn’t sure Maria would accept that answer.

“Nothing flamboyant, no,” Tess said, hoping that would suffice.

“I figured,” Maria said, setting the scissors down on the vanity, “so I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Tess hated surprises. Tess _hated_ surprises.

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said as Maria headed out of the guest room, left Tess alone. 

Tess really hated surprises. What could Maria possibly bring back? The dress, probably, but had she altered the dress? No, Maria’s sewing wasn’t very good, she definitely wouldn’t have altered the dress, but what other surprise could there be? And why didn’t Maria already know that Tess hated surprises? She felt she practically had _I hate surprises_ tattooed to her forehead. She _hated_ surprises.

“Close your eyes!” Maria called from the hallway, and begrudgingly, Tess followed the order.

She heard Maria come back into the guest room, floorboards creaking under her weight, and fabric on fabric, Maria was setting something down on the bed. Tess opened her eyes, and there was the dress, the dreaded dress, white and balloon-sleeved and cinched at the waist, the front panels and cuffs embroidered with red, blue, and yellow flowers, plus little green branches connecting each bunch. How convenient it had been that Maria’s midsummer dress, the only dress she’d kept, fit Tess well enough and just so happened to be white. Though Tess still didn’t want to wear the dress, at least the dress wasn’t awful. At least the skirt ended right above her knees, and at least the sleeves made the dress look more casual. At least the dress wasn’t overwhelmingly white. Of course, Joel would show up wearing a pair of pants and a shirt like the ones he wore every day, and she would be stuck in this dress, but at least the dress wasn’t _so_ bad.

Above the dress was a little scrap of fabric, white with patches of color. Her cheeks warmed; it felt embarrassing to be known.

“I did my best with the colors,” Maria said, picking up the headband she’d made for Tess, one that matched the dress. “You know I’m not very good at this.”

Tess took the headband Maria held out, ran her fingers over the white fabric. In its previous life, this had been a pillowcase, or maybe a torn-apart sheet, spare fabric that Maria had refused to waste. And the flowers - more like five-pointed daisies than the elaborate flowers on the dress, but flowers all the same - were embroidered along the crown, the stitches uneven and the flowers misshapen but the effect clear nonetheless. 

“When did you have time to do this?” Tess asked, but she wasn’t sure she would be able to comprehend Maria’s answer, for Maria had made her something. Maria had predicted that Tess would refuse an updo and had made a headband accordingly. That was so nice of her. She hadn’t needed to do that.

Maria laughed, said, “Midnight last night.”

“You didn’t need to do that,” Tess said, shaking her head.

“Yes, I did,” Maria said, then gestured to the dress. “Get dressed. Let me know if you want me to put your hair up.”

“Thanks,” Tess said, and she went to thank Maria further, but Maria was out of the room in a flash, keeping to a schedule, _chop chop._ The dress loomed before her on the bed. She almost wished Maria had stayed, had helped her unzip her jeans and pull her shirt over her head, then held the dress above her head, eased the garment over her body. Instead, she would start a staring contest with the dress, and she knew the dress would win.

But it wasn’t the worst of dresses. Her mother had shown her worse ones during prom season, dresses so awful that, in the end, she refused to go to prom at all. Joel hadn’t gone to his prom either, but he’d been a father at the time, so she couldn’t really swap stories with him. All things considered, he was _old,_ and not because of his age but because he had been so much older than she had been when the outbreak happened. He’d had a daughter, a house, a brother he called when he needed help and a job he’d been afraid to lose, and meanwhile, she had a roommate who was trying to join a sorority and who probably had a binge-drinking problem, and she was most afraid of failing organic chemistry. And she’d been a million miles away from home, give or take. Chapel Hill would’ve been closer, but the university in Boston had offered her an almost-free ride, provided that she did certain services for them. And she was _good_ at being a poster child. She could talk about her upbringing as if she’d been a poor, unfortunate soul when the truth was that tens of thousands of dollars per year for an education was objectively unaffordable. Her mother worked as a secretary, and her father was a carpenter, so what use would they have had for college? But she wanted to study chemistry, and she had the grades to be accepted somewhere great, and she could go to college, if only she could find a way to afford the tuition. And she managed to find a way. Against her odds, she managed to find a way.

And then the outbreak happened, and none of her work mattered. She’d been angry at first, as everyone else had been, but mostly, she’d been scared. She hadn’t made any friends, her perfect GPA inhospitable to relationships, the thought of parties making her wince. In Boston, she was all alone, stuck in a FEDRA tent and asking if anyone had a charged phone, could she please make a call? It would be long distance, she needed to call home to her parents. If she could contact her parents, she would be able to solve this problem. They always had the answers. They knew how to open a bank account. They knew what mortgages were. When she looked into student loans, they knew which ones had to be paid back in which ways, and they taught her what defaulting was. Being trapped in a FEDRA tent was just another one of those benign adulthood problems she was encountering for the first time, and in the end, the solution would be painfully simple, like figuring out which form to use at the DMV. The only thing she truly feared at that point was not knowing how to find an answer to a simple question.

She never managed to speak to her parents again. Though she assumed they were dead, she still held out stupid hope that her brothers were alright. They could hunt, and her oldest brother and his wife and two kids were homesteaders, so they all could have survived. How old would the kids be now, twenty-three, twenty-five? Did they remember a life before this one? She did, but that life was laughably different in ways that overlooked the infection altogether. Back then, she’d been a child, and overnight in October, she became an adult. In 2013, she was afraid of underage drinking and failing organic chemistry and her roommate, and in 2014, she was afraid of becoming infected, being shot, and getting pregnant. She lost her virginity after the outbreak, not before. She went from thinking obsessively about a future she could barely fathom to avoiding at all costs a future she knew was inevitable, and the change had shaken her more deeply than she’d expected. By the time she was twenty-two, she'd been hardened, and she’d killed enough people for her to stop deliberately counting. One of her friends back then used to stick-and-poke the number of people he’d killed onto his wrist as a reminder to avoid conflict, but she’d always thought it would be better to be reminded of all of the awful things that had happened to her, and then all the people she hadn’t killed despite her circumstances.

Had she read more love stories, she might’ve lied to herself and claimed that Joel had changed everything, but the truth was that he’d just been another guy to her. She’d had contacts everywhere, and he and his brother had been valuable ones, good in a fight, Firefly connection. The truth was that she hadn’t meant to become close to him, but they’d been similar in ways they’d had trouble avoiding. If two people with the same tendencies were stuck together for work, they would inevitably grow close, wouldn’t they? And Joel and Tess had both been adept at avoiding their own emotions, and maybe that was why their rare, glorious traipses into vulnerability had felt like taking ecstasy; they would get so high and feel unstoppable, but the next morning, they would be lower than they ever could’ve imagined, and they would both pretend that the night beforehand hadn’t happened. And then, they would pick up shipments from Bill, and they would communicate without having to speak, and they could stay in this state indefinitely because they didn’t challenge each other. They were attached to each other because they supported each other’s worst habits without question. 

But then she started to care about him, really care about him, and against all odds, he started to care about her too. And his brother left in a brash, awful way, and she was there with him in the aftermath. And he told her about Sarah, and she told him about how she thought she might never know what happened to her family, and he told her that they checked off all the boxes, the ones that asked if knowing or not knowing was worse. She loved him in a way that only someone who loves nothing could love. In a world of pain and suffering, he made her feel safe, and she loved him for that.

And against her better judgment, she’d felt safer in Teton Village because he’d been there. If they were together, how could they ever die? She felt their immortality as a cosmic truth, one proven countless times, her immunity, his many bullet scars. They were quietly invincible, so seven men on a mountain couldn’t kill them, could they? But Joel had been unconscious in the snow, and she’d been alone, as alone as she could be with corpses surrounding her, and was he still breathing? She hadn’t known if he was still alive, and maybe that urgency had helped her slaughter seven people, her knife slitting throats, heads colliding with her knee, gray matter on her jeans. Once she knew they were all dead, she’d taken two gasping, awful breaths, then gone to him, her hands on his face, his name desperate on her lips, _Joel, Joel, Joel._ Would he survive the ride home? She didn’t know how to treat his wounds, and when he was sick halfway back to the settlement, she swore, asked him to hang on, please, just a little while longer. By the time they approached the gate, her voice was hoarse, and she could barely scream their names, barely announce who they were. She’d struggled to explain what had happened to Maria and the others who came to help, for she’d been afraid that she might start crying.

Holding him on their first night together in Jackson had felt like holding him, but holding him after her horse had come home had felt like closure, like safety. She hadn’t wanted to let go, and she'd been able to tell that he was uncomfortable because she kept holding him, but in her defense, the feeling had been intoxicating. There had been snow on the ground, and he’d been so warm, and he smelled like home, and he wasn’t replaceable, just another man, no, he was important to her, and she needed him. She needed him alive and steady alongside her, or else she would be so much more scared. And the truth was that his presence was negligible, she could kill seven men without him, but she felt so much safer when he was with her, and safety was gold in this world. And she loved him. She hardly knew what love was, but she knew that she loved him, and though she wanted to tell him so, she didn’t think she was educated enough on the subject to use those words yet, so instead, she told him something else. If she wanted him close for as long as they both lived, then there was an obvious way to say that. When she was next attacked, she wanted him there, and if this was her best way of expressing that, then so be it.

But she didn’t want to wear a dress. Why did she need to wear a dress in order to tell him that she wanted him alongside her in times of strife? But this dress wasn’t so bad, so she unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, pulled the dress over her head. Maria had left her a brush, so she pulled her hair half-back, then brought the headband Maria had made her over her head, tied the ends at the nape of her neck. There. Looking in the mirror, she found that she looked not at all like herself and exactly like herself simultaneously.

Joel had asked about rings, but she’d thought that rings would miss the point too - why did they need a symbol of their commitment other than their life together itself? - and she didn’t want to know the origin of a ring either, plucked from a body on patrols, taken from a frightening pile of salvaged ones in the community center. Maria would officiate, and there wouldn’t be handwritten vows, _in sickness_ spoken the same way it had been at her oldest brother’s wedding. As a girl, she’d been taught to crave a night like tonight, one with months, maybe years, of planning beforehand, and a fairytale dress, and a Disney prince of a man who dressed like a Ken doll and probably had the same nether regions, and she’d never grown up enough to know that that image was a lie, let alone that she disliked it. She’d heard of marriage exactly twice post-outbreak before living in Jackson, once at the all-women’s bunkhouse she lived in when she was younger - and there, she’d thought the woman talking about a symbolic marriage was a small-minded idiot - and again when they arrived at the fence in Jackson and heard Maria call Joel her brother-in-law, and at the time, Tess had been delirious enough with fever to think she’d hallucinated the conversation. 

Tonight’s event was objectively pointless. There was no reason to come together and celebrate the union of two people who had already united. The reaction to the announcement flyers made her think that even - she swallowed hard at the word - a wedding wouldn’t keep people from assuming she and Joel were siblings, Ellie’s parents, not Ellie’s parents and it’s a weird and probably immoral story so don’t ask about it, or work partners with a little extra. Even Maria hadn’t been pushing for this, had heard the concrete and immovable _no_ from last summer and never brought the subject up again. No, this had been Tess’s choice - and Joel’s, but she’d never thought he would be opposed - and the choice was fruitless, empty, a throwaway choice, a choice without consequences, and she was making it because she wanted to. Why did she want to do this? She didn’t have an answer, at least not one that connected a glorified party to Joel, and maybe tonight would feel like holding him on that first night in Jackson, not as good as she’d expected, a feeling that made her wonder if she was broken. But when they’d been out in the national forest, the stars bright above them, the scent of fir trees, her body warm with vulnerability, he’d asked her to marry him in few words, and the moon had been especially big. No, she wasn’t broken, for she’d had to clench her fists that night, curl her toes, bite her cheeks to keep her emotions at bay. Though her mind had been empty, her body hummed with what she felt, and hummed even more when she tried to figure out how to say yes. The sky that night had felt vast and endless but still too small to contain what she felt.

Maria knocked twice on the closed door, startling Tess. 

“Everything alright?” Maria called, so Tess swallowed, regaining her composure.

“Yes,” she managed, “I’ll be out in a minute.”

Beyond the door, Tess heard Tommy say something in the upstairs hallway, then heard Maria tell him _no, you are not wearing shorts._


	11. Never Cursed (Part II)

Holding both of her hands in a church made him think they were doing something bad, like stealing money from the donation box or using the remembrance candles to set the place on fire. There were people in the pews, lots of people, Ellie and her friends up front because they could be, other families stuck together, kids growing restless on their parents’ laps; Maria stood a few steps back between Joel and Tess, button-down shirt, her best pants, Tess having stolen her one dress for the evening. That afternoon, Joel and Tommy had stood on ladders so they could hang the little lights, and Maria had leaned against one of the pews and told them that everything they were doing wrong while Tess stood awkwardly alongside her, not really caring. If he looked at Tess directly, he could see reflections of the lights in her eyes, but he couldn’t look at her like that right now, for he’d stared a moment too long and missed when Maria wanted him to repeat what she said, the crowd laughing at the awkward silence that made both him and Tess blush. But he recovered, and when Maria said his full name, Tess raised an eyebrow. _I didn’t know your middle name was Edward._

In the front pews, Ellie and Cat sat next to each other and held hands, and Tommy clicked the button on Maria’s film camera, one he hardly knew how to work but one she insisted he take anyway. Every so often, Joel heard the shutter sound, and he winced; he really didn’t like having his picture taken. The most he hoped for was that someone captured on film when he and Tess first saw each other half an hour before the ceremony started, and he’d been trying to cope with seeing Tess in a dress when she questioned why he was wearing a tie, a red paisley one too, and she'd started to take it off, but she hadn't been able to get the knot undone, so for once, she laughed, admitted defeat, and asked him how to untangle the wretched thing

Now, her turn. She looked flustered, so he involuntarily squeezed her hands, and, wait, had that been noticeable? He was getting sweaty. The cuffs of her sleeves were touching his wrists. He was starting to understand why she’d wanted a short ceremony, only the bare minimum, no aisles to walk down, no flowers, no music. But when she spoke, she sounded calm, maybe a rehearsed kind of calm but calm nonetheless. He met her gaze, and for a moment, he forgot that there were people in the pews, forgot that she was saying things meant to tie them together for life, for richer for poorer, for better for worse. At least they’d already seen each other’s _worse._ Why did she sound so serious? He wanted to hug her and ask her to stop.

She looked so nice. He wanted to remember how nice she looked. He wanted to remember it all, but he didn’t want to feel it all, for feeling every feeling rarely worked out in his favor. But she squeezed his hands back, she understood, and as Maria said _I now pronounce you,_ Tess brought one palm to his cheek, a little smile on her lips, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. And he brought his arm around her back, she was wearing her same lace-up boots as always, he didn’t want her to fall, and there was applause because this was a wedding, yes, _their_ wedding, and she was laughing against him because people were clapping and whooping for no good reason at all. And she wrapped her arms around him, still on tiptoe, and he held her, the embroidery on her dress scratchy, tendrils of her hair touching his neck. So that was it, then, and their lives were entirely the same, no big changes whatsoever, no cosmic shift, but still, she leaned away from him, brushed her thumb over his cheek, smiled incredulously, _how ridiculous is this?_ And then he kissed her, making them even. 

The booze was free-flowing. He hadn’t realized the town had this much booze, but lo and behold, there was a whole barrel of whiskey, and glass bottles sat at the edges of the church, waiting for someone to fill a cup. The music was loud for now, quiet for the old days, and people wanted to dance. Everyone wanted a party, and though they ought to join, they were stuck on the sidelines, two glasses of whiskey, haphazard _congratulations_ in all directions. Though he’d known that this would be _an event,_ a party with attendees, a celebration of the two of them, he hadn’t expected that they would receive so much attention, hands gripping his arm, people calling the ceremony beautiful even though it’d lasted all of fifteen minutes. And Tess couldn’t be charismatic under pressure, neither could he, so they smiled awkwardly and thanked their neighbors for coming, but then again, had anyone stayed home? The whole settlement must’ve been packed into the church, save for the people manning the borders, but still, those shifts were probably short tonight, letting people cut loose after a long day. And someone else was coming up to them, a couple who lived a few doors down, they had two small children who had been instructed to say _congratulations_ on cue, and at least he could smile at that.

In a rare moment of peace, Tess leaned over to whisper something in his ear, “Looks like she’s having fun.”

She nodded toward Ellie on the dance floor, and the girl was smiling so wide, almost laughing, as she and Cat danced to the music. This song was upbeat, and the two were jumping along to it, hands clasped, mouthing the lyrics. Softly, he smiled. Ellie looked so happy.

“Glad to see it,” Joel said, then tipped back some of his drink, thankful for the quiet.

Across the church, Dina and Jesse were standing against the wall, their own drinks in hand, he didn’t know if he was allowed to scold them for that, and they were talking animatedly, as if the rest of the party were just noise, a backdrop for their more important part of a coming-of-age movie. And Tommy was properly drunk, he’d stopped the music and given a speech earlier, and his words had slurred, _when I first met Tess, she wasn't very nice to me, but she’s great now!_ Luckily, Maria had tugged him away after he called for a loud huzzah of a toast, and now, they danced together, bodies flush, and Tommy was whispering something in her ear, and she was laughing. Joel wasn’t sure he would ever get used to hearing Maria laugh, her nature serious by default, but every time he’d heard her laugh, she’d been laughing because of something Tommy had said to her, something Joel couldn’t understand, something for the two of them only. And now, she was laughing, and she brushed a piece of his hair off of his face, bittersweet eyes, and kissed him.

The song changed. Another couple was leaving the dance floor, and when they spotted Joel and Tess, Joel tensed. As he looked over at Tess, he saw that she shared his feelings, so she took his hand, then lit up with a false smile.

“I love this song!” she said, then tugged him toward the dance floor, and he resisted, trying to keep up the image, but then she gave him a look, one that wasn't part of the act, so he let her pull him into the mess of people.

“You never struck me as someone who likes Don Henley,” he said, bringing his hands to her hips. He couldn’t tell how he felt about the dress, for it was spectacularly un-Tess, and though he liked the way she looked tonight, he would’ve liked her just as much in the jean shorts she’d wished she could wear. But the dress was nice. Novel, that was the word. He could imagine a black-and-white photograph of the ceremony, and she would look so bright, colorful even in a greyscale. But then again, maybe she was bright to him because she looked happy tonight.

She furrowed her brow, asked _who?_ But at least this was a song they could dance to, and he led because she couldn’t, and they were lost in a sea of people, lights above them, the church warming up from the heat of the bodies, the doors thrust open to let cool air in. Summer in its height, and he thought he might wear holes through his socks by the time the night was over, and Tess was smiling. Why was she smiling? She tugged him closer, face against his shoulder, and he palmed her back, borrowed linen fabric, something borrowed. She’d borrowed his coat back in the QZ, a morning drop, hers had been shot to smithereens in an encounter with FEDRA soldiers, and when he next wore the thing, it smelled like her. In the end, she had to trade a whole stack of cards for a new coat, wretched thing, and secretly, he’d wished that they could keep swapping his back and forth because he liked how it felt to put the coat on and feel her body's warmth in the fabric.

Nothing had changed. The world hadn’t ended. They weren’t going to die, at least not yet. Though they’d had a ceremony, had put up flyers around town and said vows in front of the whole settlement, nothing was different. But he spun Tess around, he was clumsy but wanted to impress, and she laughed, actually laughed. She was having fun, and if this kind of _nothing_ made her happy, then he would go out of his way to find another _nothing,_ then another, then another. Had she really wanted this, even with the crowds and awkward conversations? He’d wanted it, of course he’d wanted it, but last summer, she’d been so against. What had changed? Teton Valley had changed her, but the attack hadn’t made her smaller. He thought that pain only ever made him smaller. He thought that pain shrunk him and fragmented him and left him broken, but Tess’s pain had made her bigger. Though he knew better than to think that Teton Village had built her character, he listened to her laugh against him and knew that, when the world had thrown a punch at her, she’d taken a deep breath, then thrown a punch back. He didn’t know if he was capable of the same.

Someone put on a slow song. His toes curled, hidden in his boots; secretly, he’d been hoping for a slow song. And if tonight had changed anything, then he wanted that change to be one that blended them into this crowd, human bodies stuck together, silent stories passing through the room, and everyone was focused on their own story, but if they looked in their peripheries, they would see a glimpse of someone else’s, and then, they would look away because that was private, wasn’t it? But they’d remember that glimpse, for that glimpse had reminded them that they weren’t alone in this world. No, there were others, and they had full and irrelevant lives, and no one was special, but everyone was special, and life was for the living. They’d all been given a second chance, or maybe just a _chance_ at all, and though sometimes that chance felt like a burden, the weight of their sins of survival making them wonder why they deserved this chance at all, they needed to take the chance, then run with that chance, run as far as they could no matter how sore they felt. Why? Because they were alive, and that was the greatest curse they could be given, but it was never a curse at all.

“I love this song,” she whispered to him, their story kept secret.

He wondered if she’d been hoping for a slow song too.

* * *

The crowd never waned, the alcohol still flowing, the people still laughing and dancing. Tess had loosened the laces on her boots; she leaned against him by a pew, his arm around her back because he was tipsy. At least Ellie and her friends had been responsible enough to head home at a decent hour.

Tess nudged his shoulder with her nose.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, then dipped her hand into the back pocket of his pants.

Though he’d assumed she would take him home, instead she dragged him through the settlement, houses with dark windows, everyone asleep or at the party, and they passed the bar, the meat market, the store with its wooden signs in the windows, _bread and milk._ And she pulled him toward the edge of the settlement, the walls surrounding the town, and there were the steps up to the lookout, she hiked up her dress so that she could get over the locked barrier in front of the circling staircase, all wooden, narrow like the one on the fire tower they’d stayed in during their vacation in the spring, and they circled their way up to the walkways atop the walls, the lit towers, the town’s protection. As always, there were lookouts along the walkway, and Tess waved to one in the dark, and he waved back. Had she planned this? Or maybe whoever she’d waved to had been at the party, and she’d asked him then if she could take Joel up here, something uninterrupted, something the rest of the town - chiefly Maria, for he doubted anyone else would care - wouldn’t know about. Taking her hand back, she leaned back against the walkway’s railing, stared up at the sky.

“Town’s dark tonight,” she said. “You can see all the stars.”

They had a full moon tonight. Was that good luck? Though he wasn't particularly cultured, he thought weddings might be universally superstitious. He used to touch planes before boarding them, the few times he ever flew in a plane. He’d heard Tess talk to their tomato plants, whispering good morning, asking them how they were doing. Looking up, he squinted at the brightness of the moon, so full tonight, and he wondered if maybe this was a curse instead. Maybe he’d been cursed from the beginning. Or maybe he was cursing himself, for while he thought of curses, Tess was staring up at the stars, and the town behind them was dark, save for the church. He wondered if the party had noticed they were gone. 

She sat down, legs crossed over the trodden boards. Paired with such a bright and frilly dress, her boots looked silly, but she didn’t have any other shoes to wear. And the dress wasn’t hers at all. He wondered why Maria had kept such a thing, but maybe it was traditional, something she wanted to pass down. Back when he and Tess had stayed in Maria and Tommy’s guest room, he’d seen the pictures kept in the spare closet, black-and-white portraits of Maria’s parents and grandparents, a family tree that dated back two-hundred years. Downstairs, their shelves were full of journals, half in English, half in Swedish, talk of the harvest that year, 1958, 1912, pencil marks fading away, postcards pressed between the pages. They had magnets on their refrigerator, and photographs in frames on their walls, and those little red horses, he was forgetting the name of them, but those little red horses, hand-carved and painted red, those horses were _everywhere,_ one on their hearth, one on their kitchen table, one hiding on the bookshelf. Their house held history. He wondered what he and Tess had inherited, the previous owners’ horse paintings still on the walls, the sink in their laundry room stained. He wondered if ghosts lived alongside them, then wondered if those ghosts might be glad to have company.

He sat down alongside her. She leaned her head on his shoulder, their thighs touching. He ought to find her a book about the stars, or maybe he should keep that book for himself, he knew nothing of the constellations, or maybe he should point to the sky and ask her for answers, for she always knew those answers. Months ago, she’d explained the aurora borealis to him, and he couldn’t remember how it worked, something about magnets, but he’d liked hearing her talk about it. He didn’t have goals anymore, didn’t know how he could create any, but he wanted to see the northern lights with her someday. And she’d said that, in theory, they could see some in Jackson, given the right circumstances, so maybe, all he would need to do was wait.

“I always dreamt of a place like this,” he said, a painstaking truth. 

While he was killing practically for sport, sneaking into quarantine zones, fighting for a life not worth fighting for, he dreamt of a house in a normal town, and a car he’d already paid off, and a backyard, and a dog too. He’d dreamt of neighbors he could borrow sugar from. But those dreams had been fleeting images, reflections of the past, another life, and when they first moved into their house, he looked at the marble countertops and wondered if he was still dreaming. No, he wasn’t a man who lived in a house like this, and he didn’t fill the place well, the space swallowing him whole. At least Tess had touched the countertops, nice and cold, and said that they were perfect for rolling out pie crusts. At least she had taken a look at their new life and deemed it real.

“I never dreamt of anything,” she said, then looked at him as if he would understand.

And he did understand, in whatever way he could. He didn’t know if it was more painful to live with or without hope. Though both options scared him, he looked at her and felt that for once he would like to try.

“Did you have a good time tonight?” she asked, then looked back up.

She was nervous in a quiet, vulnerable way. She didn’t like that she cared.

“Yeah, I did,” he said, then deflected, the same habits shared by two. “Did you?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” he said, nodding to himself in confirmation. Good.

She’d shown him Sirius before, the dog star. Above them, he found that one in the sky, and tonight, he thought it might be shining brighter than usual.

* * *

The house was dark around them, the windows still open. They weren’t used to living in silence. When he lifted her dress over her shoulders, he hesitated, then went to the armchair at the edge of the room, draped the garment over top. Looking back at her, he watched the way she held onto the headboard, fingers wrapped around, gently gripping. She was wearing a bra he’d seen hundreds of times before. She looked like Tess.

Maybe he should shut the windows. 

* * *

Lying down, the tallgrass could swallow them whole. They put the sheet down in front of an abandoned truck so that, if any patrols happened to gallop by, they wouldn’t be accidentally trampled. And he hoped a little bit that he would hear the sound of trotting hooves in the distance, and then, they would both look up and watch as unsuspecting riders went by, none the wiser. And they would be on their backs, their hands held above their faces to block the glare, a partly cloudy day, just enough sun to keep them warm. They would be kept secret, a story meant only for two. 

The breeze shook the grass. If he sat up, then he would stare right down at the settlement, but for now, he was on a hill with her, and there was no one else in this world, and the prospect of being alone no longer scared him. The bedsheet they sat on in the grass was stained from another time like this, and before then from her period, and before then from a wound of his, and before then from someone long ago, someone forgotten; sometimes, you couldn’t get the stains out no matter how hard you tried, but you could use the sheet as a kind of picnic blanket instead, and value it enough that you’d still flick off the ants. That morning, they slept in, and she fed him strawberries for breakfast, sitting on his lap and laughing, still naked. Then, the gates opened for them and them alone, a pair joined by the rolled-up sheet she held in her right hand, he in his left. They walked up the hill, his thighs aching, so accustomed to taking this trip on horseback. At the top of the hill, she stood upwind, then shook the sheet out, patted the grass down and sat, waited for him to join her. 

Above them, the powerlines interrupted the view, but he could still see the mountains from this angle. Tess had taken off her boots, left each one at a corner of the sheet, keeping the thing from blowing away in the wind; she stretched her legs out long, toes touching the tallgrass, ankles crossed. Her tank top was riding up.

He thought he should say something. He thought she might want him to say something. Now, they didn’t have an audience, so if he told her that he wanted to stick around, then she might believe him. 

“Tess,” he said, and he felt as if that one word might split their world in two. The wind was telling him to keep quiet. Above them, birds were chirping, and leaves were rustling in the breeze. He needed to wait his turn to talk.

Turning onto her side, she looked up at him. She liked him tongue-tied. 

“Tess, I-”

But she kissed him before he could falter with his words. She kissed him before he could make a fool of himself. And maybe they’d abandoned language long ago, on some cold night in the QZ, bodies close together on a dreadful mattress, legs tangled up, both of their coats resting like blankets over their bodies. Maybe she’d figured him out a long time ago, and he had been left to catch up. Or maybe she was afraid of what he would say, and afraid of having to say something similar in return, or maybe she just wanted to kiss him. On that morning, there was no better place to kiss than on their stained bedsheet while lying in the grass, the powerlines above them ancient and useless, the clouds in the sky taking on shapes that they could point at and describe, a fox, a heart, a daisy. Maybe he could forget where his body ended and hers began, and then, he would feel as if she knew what he meant, for she was in his mind anyway. 

But he would tell her someday, in real words. She touched his chin, her fingertips so gentle, and when she pulled away from him, her eyes were closed, her lashes so dark and wispy, her face scarred from battles neither of them could remember. Then, she looked at him as if he were someone worth looking at. 

“You taste like strawberries,” she said, voice as soft as the wind against their skin, and he pulled her into a kiss as if to prove a point.


	12. Jackson, Day 1

**JACKSON, DAY 1**

Tommy and Maria had a big, bright kitchen. Oak cabinets, chrome range, they kept plants on the windowsills and magnets on the fridge. Dala horses were hidden in the corners, next to a mason jar full of oats or behind the basil plant, and their dishware was mismatched in a cheery way. As Joel set the table, one scuffed and marked up, language engraved into its wood, he wondered who would sit where, which plate he would receive for the evening. Would it be the white, square plate with the scalloped edges? Or would it be the round one with floral designs in the center? The only dish whose fate he knew was the Moomin plate, white with Moomintroll dancing a jig in the center; Maria had saved that one for Ellie.

A hallway separated the kitchen from the living room, and though he couldn’t see the living room couch from the kitchen, Joel glanced over his shoulder anyway. Tess had asked if she could lie down before dinner, and Maria had said yes, absolutely, but the bed upstairs hadn’t been made yet, would she mind napping on the couch? And Tess hadn’t minded, so she slept in the living room while Ellie took a shower upstairs. When his brother and new sister-in-law invited him into their home, Maria spoke of how, regardless of their duties around town, she and Tommy always tried to cook dinner together, and Joel had been charmed, his little brother cooking dinner every night with his wife, how strange and different. Everything here was strange and different. Though he’d spent years reaching for the way things used to be, he didn’t know how to process seeing the old ways in front of him, actualized in painful reality. And the hallway between the kitchen and the living room was full of framed photographs, Tommy and Maria being married in casual clothes, Maria’s homesteading family members, Maria and her parents next to a runestone in Sweden, Tommy and Joel as children, and when he reached the end of the hall, he loomed in the doorway, looked over at the couch. Tess faced the couch cushions, curled in on herself, knees bent, hands fisted beneath her chin. She was covered in a blanket he figured Maria had put over her. He stared at her back, then waited for movement, signs of breathing, then counted one, two, three breaths before he could look away.

Tess was alive. She was alive. When he and Ellie made it past the Jackson perimeter, he'd looked at Tess and felt his mind empty. She was alive, and he could think of nothing more than that she was alive. His best friend. No, shit, he couldn’t think like that, _best friend._ No, Tess was Tess, had always been Tess, and she was alive now despite her odds. Thank goodness. He watched her take another breath, then another one. Thank goodness.

For now, he needed to keep it together. He could sense that he was close to an emotional edge, and he refused to go over that edge. No, he was fine, he was going to be fine, and Ellie was fine too. He wasn’t going to think about Salt Lake City. He wasn’t going to think about anything. Tess stirred in her sleep, and he held his breath. He wasn’t going to think about anything else.

When Ellie saw the Moomin plate, she gasped, then asked Maria who this guy was, doing his fancy little dance. Maria told her that that was Moomintroll, the main character of the Moomin comics, and he lived in Moominvalley with Moominmamma and Moominpappa and Little My and his friend Sniff, and in the spring and summer, his best friend Snuffkin would come to visit. Though the comic was Finnish, it had been written in Swedish, so her parents had read them to her when she was little. Maria loved Moomintroll, smiled down at the plate and said she just thought he was fun, and Ellie liked him too, especially liked his dance moves. Tommy and Maria sat at opposite heads of the table, Ellie across from Joel and Tess, and with big serving plates in the center, Joel could hardly believe his luck. Here they were, surrounded by electricity, and there was medium-rare steak ahead of him, and a big bowl of mashed potatoes, and greens, _greens!_ He’d never been so appetized by spinach in his life. As the dishes were passed around, he accidentally bumped arms with Tess, and she laughed a little, said _watch where you’re going, Texas,_ and he thought he might burst. He dug his fingernails into his palms. He couldn’t handle this.

After dinner, Maria took a tupperware full of ice cream out of the freezer, set the container on the counter so that the ice cream could thaw. _Dessert’s mandatory,_ she said, then nudged Ellie as the girl washed dishes. Still sitting down, Tommy across from her, Tess looked exhausted, leaned her elbows on the table, slouched over in her chair, but when Joel met her gaze, she forced a smile. Her cheeks looked gaunt, but she had better color. And she was alive. When he left her, he’d assumed she would die, had known that Maria didn’t want to spare the antibiotics to treat her because she was already too far gone. But she’d survived. He didn’t know what to do now. Tonight, they would be sleeping together in the upstairs guest room, and he didn’t know what to do about that. Sure, they’d slept in the same bed plenty of times already, but a shitty mattress in the QZ was different. Back then, they’d pushed two cots together and made what they had work. And, really, they slept together out of necessity, not choice, though he wouldn’t be able to come up with their vital reasoning if asked, so how would they fare in an on-purpose bedroom? This house was so tidy, the decorations sparse but beautiful; he figured that the guest room would have matching furniture, spare linens in the closet, and curtains that only blocked a little bit of light. Since he met Tess, he’d never had curtains, sometimes never even had bedsheets. They didn’t make sense in a real bedroom, but he wanted them to. 

No, that was too much. He couldn’t let himself be overwhelmed. Instead, he offered to help with the dishes, but no, no, Ellie could handle herself, thank you very much, and he nudged her, and thankfully, she laughed and nudged him back. She had clean clothes now. Though she would be sleeping on the couch tonight, she seemed excited to have any cushions at all beneath her. And a house! She’d never really been in a house before, at least not one that people actually lived in, and she told Maria that while Maria scooped homemade ice cream into bowls. Ellie’s favorite part was all of the horses, and Maria smiled, then challenged Ellie to count the number of Dala horses in the house, that is, if she could find all of them. And yeah, _duh_ , Ellie could find all of them, of _course_ she could, and she looked toward the horse magnet on the fridge, asked if that one counted.

Five bowls of ice cream, five people around a table. Tommy had nicknamed Maria _elk_ for reasons Joel didn’t know. Sometimes, Joel’s elbow brushed Tess’s, and he tried not to react. When had he last had ice cream? He couldn’t remember the last time, and Ellie mentioned how QZ food really sucked and this was just, like, _so_ good, and so needed. They’d been eating nothing but canned beans, and those weren’t even _good_ canned beans. Sometimes, Joel didn’t even bother heating the beans up, and Ellie didn’t understand how a sentient being could willingly eat cold beans. Alongside him, Tess laughed a little, and he thought of new shipments from Bill, canned ham, pills they would need to sort for hours, and he opened a jar, set down two forks, and told her to take half. And she looked at him incredulously, then took the can over to the gas range in the apartment, heated the chunks of ham while giving him a death glare.

When everyone retired for the evening, Tess sat at the vanity in the guest bedroom while Joel stood near the door. He didn’t know where she’d been sleeping until now. He was wearing Tommy’s sweatpants, which were a bit too small. For once, his stomach was full, and that fullness felt uncomfortable in its unfamiliarity. And white sheets, there were white sheets on the bed, and though he’d taken a shower, he still thought that he and Tess would leave brash stains on this bed. 

“I know this looks kind of silly,” Tess said, glancing down at her lap. “Maria’s clothes, not my first choice.”

He didn’t know what she was talking about. 

“There’s a makeshift infirmary in the middle of town,” Tess said, looked out one of the windows. Here, windows were kept open, and doors were never locked, and curtains were drawn at night so that everyone could get a good night’s sleep. And there weren’t gunshots sounding at all hours. “All of my stuff’s still there.”

“Didn’t bring it?” he asked, grasping for conversation. He didn’t want to think about the bed.

“When you guys were at the gate, I left without my pack,” she said, still facing the window, “and I never had a chance to go back for it. But I’ll get it in the morning.”

“You’ve been in the infirmary this whole time?”

“Maria was afraid to have a corpse in the house,” Tess gave. Then, self-consciously, she added, “I don’t think she knows I heard her say that.”

“I thought you were going to die.”

When she tensed, he swallowed hard. He’d said too much, and neither of them wanted to talk about her life, his life, the life of the girl who slept downstairs. No, there was too much for them both to handle, and he wanted something else. He wanted something simple, but he couldn’t figure out how to create something simple here. Soon enough, the three of them would find a house to live in, and they would start contributing to the town in some way, Ellie working alongside the other kids, Tess and Joel going out for the daily patrols. Their lives would be normal, disconcertingly normal, and his first step toward that normal life was getting into this bed next to her, but he couldn’t pull back the covers. He couldn’t let their bond mean something, for if he did, he feared for the emotional consequences. Already, he’d had his emotions consume him, and there had been casualties to that consumption. If he tried to put words to what he’d felt when he saw her alive, he figured that the cordyceps would mutate, and the world would be doomed.

“I’m still not all the way better,” she said, then stood up, walked to her side of the bed. Her side of the bed. No, they didn’t have sides of the bed ascribed to each other; they had two twin-sized cots pushed together, one of which had been hers and hers alone. She went to the side where her cot had once been. “I’m exhausted most of the time. Could really use some sleep.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Yeah, okay.”

On his bedside table, the one lamp in the room sat; he turned the lamp off as she pulled back the covers, then climbed in alongside her. If this bed had been a full-size, he would’ve lost his mind, but thankfully, it was a queen instead, so there was a modest distance between them. They wouldn’t touch at all if they didn’t toss and turn. In some ways, they might feel as if they weren’t sharing a bed at all.

At night, the settlement was dark, so dark, and so quiet too, and after days of traveling, nightmares whenever he closed his eyes, he found that sleep came to him with ease, but he woke when she reached for him. She was reaching for him. Yes, she was resting one of her arms over his stomach, her chin against his shoulder. She wanted to hold him. She wanted to be held by him. And he hesitated at first, but then, he took her in his arms, held her against him, an arm around her shoulders, his palm against the back of her head. With his mind going blank, he didn’t know what he was feeling, his heart rate quickening, his face heavy, and when he finally managed words, he centered himself on her name. _Tess. Tess. Tess._ Tess, in his arms, alive and breathing. Tess, out of the infirmary, wearing Maria’s pajamas that she didn’t like, holding him in bed on a night so unlike the many when the QZ's heat had been cut off in the winter. Here, they were warm, soft blankets over their bodies, the open windows letting in a sweet breeze, and she wanted to be held by him. That was something.

The next morning, he woke before her. She’d lost weight since he last saw her, but her hair had grown long, splaying over her pillow. Though he could sleep in any position, she could only sleep on her side. Her back faced him. She wore white flannel pajamas with a seashell print. Beyond her, curtains hung over the windows, the white fabric moving with the breeze, and the sun was up, a new day in a new town, a new life in a place where life could be celebrated. And Tess was alive, and she was in bed next to him. 

He stared at the seashells on her pajamas and swore he would never forget that morning.

* * *

At first, Tess couldn’t count the days, instead counted the people who loomed above her. Maria, she could remember Maria, and Maria was the meanest of them all, or at least the one who spoke most honestly. No, Maria would not host Tess, for Maria didn’t want her home to be cursed with death. And the makeshift infirmary was good enough, right? No one in the settlement was due to give birth for another few months, so barring any big accidents, the place would be empty. Tess could stay here, in a hollowed-out room in the community center in Jackson, four cots in the room, big plastic bins filled with medical supplies pushed against one of the walls. The lighting there was dismal and drastic, fluorescents for help in looking at wounds, and there weren’t any windows. Though Maria had given in and dosed Tess with penicillin - the shot had made Tess say _ow_ slowly and audibly, and Maria had stared down in horror at the sound - the most drastic treatment Tess could be given now was ice. Ice on her forehead, ice on her chest, ice on her thighs. Her clothes were perpetually wet, and she hated, _hated_ the feeling of wet clothes.

Then, the days stopped blurring together. She started recognizing and remembering faces other than Maria’s. One woman asked if she could give Tess an usnea tincture, and the woman’s daughter was there too, thick eyebrows, pretty freckles. Five drops under the tongue, hold them there for thirty seconds. The woman stroked Tess’s face, then lamented that Tess was covered in sweat. How about a cool cloth on her forehead? Yes, that’s much better, does that feel better, sweetheart? And for a moment, Tess thought she saw her own mother in this woman. She thought she saw iodine for cuts and the scar on her mother’s wrist from when she burned herself while cooking. Her mother had always stayed home when Tess was sick, and as a girl, Tess had had a bad habit of getting the flu every year even though she always got the shot. Chicken soup with extra noodles, popsicles for her throat. She missed her mother. She missed her mother in a way that made her chest ache. If her mother had been there, her mother would’ve known what to do. Her mother could’ve saved her, but her mother had probably died decades ago, her father too, and maybe all of her brothers as well. She missed her brothers. She was going to cry. She missed her brothers so much. The woman above her said _oh,_ then reached out with her thumb, dried Tess’s cheek. _It’s okay, sweetheart,_ she said. _You can go now. It’s all going to be okay._

Eventually, Tess could speak for herself, and when Maria took another temperature, Tess was only at one-oh-one. Maria furrowed her brow, then insisted on checking again, but still, Tess’s temperature had gone down. And she was hungry. She was so unbelievably hungry. Could Maria bring her something to eat? And some clothes too, if there were any to spare. And was there a way she could shower? Though Maria returned with food and clothes for Tess, she couldn’t offer much as a bath because Tess couldn’t get the wound on her back wet. If she wanted to bathe, she would need help, and now that she couldn’t count the number of days she’d gone without bathing, she willingly stripped naked in front of Maria, let Maria sponge-bathe her. When Maria found the bitemark, she hesitated, then ran the sponge over the scar, obvious but easy to hide with long hair. And Maria washed her hair too. Maria was good at washing hair, lathered Tess right up and massaged her scalp. Then, fresh clothes, borrowed pajamas for now, no need to get dressed up. Tess switched to a different, cleaner cot and slept for the rest of the day, the infirmary empty around her. Because she had been too tired to get up again, she ended up sleeping with all of the lights on.

She could manage one meal a day when Maria sat down on her cot and offered her something more.

“We’re screening _Mary Poppins_ in the theater tonight,” Maria said. “I can take you over, if you’d like.”

Sitting in a theater seat, Tess felt her heart pound. She hadn’t seen a movie since before the outbreak. The last time she’d been in a movie theater, she must’ve been sitting with her brothers, waiting for the newest _Harry Potter_ to begin. In the trodden-down entrance, someone was making popcorn. Children sat at the front of the theater, adults toward the back, and Tess, Tommy, and Maria sat in the very last row in case Tess needed to leave. But she didn’t want to leave. When the projector came on, she gasped, and there were pictures on the screen. Pictures! And there was an opening shot of London, she could still recognize Big Ben, and Julie Andrews, of course, and Dick van Dyke! Oh, Bert, the one-man band, oh, she’d seen this movie so many times as a child. She could still remember the VCR tape, the scratches around its label. Her brothers used to get so annoyed, the songs stuck in their heads, but she loved this movie, and _The Wizard of Oz_ too. As a girl, she would wear little sparkly shoes that matched Dorothy’s, click her heels together, and say _there’s no place like home_ even though she was already at home. Back then, she thought that clicking heels together could change the world.

She still knew all of the words to “A Spoonful of Sugar.” When Mary, Bert, and the children leapt into the chalk drawing, she started to cry.

“If this is too much, we can head back,” Maria said, but Tess shook her head, no, they were absolutely not going back to the infirmary. She still wanted to hear the song about laughter. She wanted to hear the song about flying a kite.

When her health returned enough for her to be bored, she asked Maria for books, and Maria brought her _Anne of Green Gables._ She’d been four pages from the end as the sirens around the settlement sounded. The gates were opening, and Joel was coming through.

* * *

Before bed the night beforehand, Joel had stopped by Ellie’s couch, her designated portion of the house. Maria and Tommy had a big bookshelf, lots of plants, wide windows, and a comfy couch. One of the floorboards was creaky, and Ellie had had fun putting her weight on that, making the sound. Oh, and she liked those Moomin guys a lot, had sought out one of the comic anthologies on the bookshelves, and in the front, someone had written their name, a man’s name, maybe Maria’s father. Though the comics were in Swedish, she could still figure out some of the plot, such as how they were all Moomins, not hippopotamuses, and Moominpappa wore a top hat, and Moominmamma held a purse. In one of the comics, Snork Maiden was cursing herself - the word _idiot_ was universal - and then, she found Moomintroll, and they were so happy to be reunited, and they hugged in a patch of daisies. Then, the word _slut_ was printed at the end, and Ellie furrowed her brow. Huh. What a strange word to use, given the context.

But before she could think about why the word _slut_ was in the comic, Joel knocked on the door jamb, his way of announcing himself. He leaned against the wall, looking awkward.

“Just wanted to make sure you’re comfortable down here,” he said. “You can take the guest room with Tess, if you’d like.”

“And stick you on the couch?” Ellie laughed. “You’d fall off.”

“Very funny.”

“Seriously, I’m fine down here,” Ellie said, tapping the couch cushions. 

Maria had put bedsheets over the couch, making it seem almost as if it were a real bed. And she liked being close to the bookshelves and windows and plants. And, fuck yeah, there was a Dala horse on the hearth, she was up to twenty-two horses in the house so far. Maybe she should take up Joel’s offer, if only to see how many horses were in the guest room.

“Well, holler if you need anything,” Joel said, “and sleep in. That’s an order.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ellie gave, lounging back on the couch.

Joel hesitated again, then headed upstairs, out of view. Now, she had the living room all to herself, and though she thought she should embrace that emptiness, instead all she could do was sleep. Oh, she was _exhausted._ After all of the traveling, she was absolutely beat, and she only woke in the morning because someone had stepped on the creaky board and then cursed. She halfway opened her eyes, trying to survey the scene, and there were Tess and Joel, walking into the kitchen together, trying to be quiet. Though Tess looked over to see if Ellie was awake, Ellie could pretend pretty well, so Tess whispered _she’s out_ to Joel, then followed him into the other room. 

Though Ellie knew she shouldn’t feel this way, she was giddy that Joel and Tess were sharing a room. She’d gotten vibes, but those vibes had never really been substantiated. Like, come on, was one kiss too much to ask for? Adults were fucking weird, man. But still, she was invested, okay? Like, let it go, she was invested, that was totally normal and not strange even a little bit. She just thought it was nice that they cared about each other, even though neither of them was good at talking about their feelings. Instead, Ellie heard snippets, bits of conversation they’d meant to keep private, sleeping bags pushed close _for warmth_ \- lamest excuse ever. In Pittsburgh, Tess had leaned over Joel after he almost drowned, and she’d touched his face in a way Ellie would never forget, her thumb over his cheek. At first, Ellie had thought the touch was medicinal, but she couldn’t think of a reason why a thumb on a cheek would save someone from drowning. And when Joel came to, coughing up water, he held Tess’s wrist in his fingers, his hand tense at first but then softening. They looked at each other for a long time before Tess turned to Henry and asked, politely, what the fuck?

“Sorry,” Tess whispered in the kitchen, but they shouldn’t have bothered whispering, for this house had paper-thin walls. “I’ve been getting so hungry.”

“You’re skin and bones,” Joel said, and then, he turned the stove on, lit the gas. “You need to eat more.”

“You sure do know how to make a girl feel special.”

Metal on metal, eggs cracking. A real breakfast, in a real house, with real people she could label as family if she so desired. She didn’t know what to think, so instead, she thought of the house in Moominvalley, a place that looked like a mushroom.

“Maria mentioned a house to me last night,” Joel said, scraping a spatula through his pan. Seriously, did they think she could sleep through all this noise? “Bit of a fixer-upper, hasn’t been cleaned out in years. But it’s ours, should we want it.”

“Fixer-upper, huh?” she said. “Did you ever watch HGTV back in the day?”

“I was never a big TV guy.”

“Yeah, that’s ‘cause you’re old, Texas.”

“We can’t move in right away, but a month of work, maybe two, and it could be ours.”

“You’re repeating yourself.”

“I’m asking if that’s something you want.”

Oh. Oh, that was a bad move, Joel. Slowly, Ellie crawled off of the couch, making sure to miss the creaky boards. Standing at one end of the hallway, she could see Tess sitting at the kitchen table, and if she walked a few paces forward, she could see Joel too, standing at the gas range, making eggs over-easy. They hadn’t noticed her just yet.

“Well, yeah,” Tess said, flustered. “We can’t stay in a guest room forever.”

Then, she looked over and spotted Ellie, and her face softened. Though Ellie didn’t like being seen as a kid, she did like when Tess looked at her that way, as if she were worth protecting.

“Hey, Ellie,” Tess said. “Good morning.”

Wearing seashell pajamas and her hair in a bun, Tess looked different. She kind of blended in with the rest of the house, white walls and whatever. The collar of her shirt hid her bitemark, but Ellie looked anyway.

“Would you like some breakfast?” Tess asked. “Joel’s making me eggs.”

* * *

Tess had heard that there was an orchard at the edge of the settlement, and that from there they would have a beautiful view of the mountains. While Maria and Tommy were out working for the day, Tess, Joel, and Ellie had been left in the house, and though Maria had offered to show Ellie around the stables at lunchtime, Joel and Tess didn’t know what they should do. Of course, they stopped by the infirmary in order to get her pack, but from there, they could either return to the house or head elsewhere, and she wanted to see the mountains. 

As spring turned to summer, the weather warmed, and the sun shone bright on the horizon. They sat down in the grassy parts of the orchard, and from there, they could look up and see the snow-capped mountains above, big fences keeping them inside of this valley. She wondered how the town had looked before the outbreak, before all of these walls had been built. Alongside her, Joel stared up too, and she wondered what he was thinking about.

“I need you to tell me what happened with the Fireflies,” she said.

He took a deep breath. She knew that this story would be a hard one to tell, but she needed to know.

“Colorado was a bust,” he said. “They relocated to Salt Lake City.”

“And what happened in Salt Lake City?”

She looked at him; he looked down at his lap. At first, she thought he might be traumatized, upset by the memory, but when he met her gaze, she realized that no, he was okay, he could relive the memory. Instead, he feared what she would think of him once she knew.

While she stared up at the mountains, he told her the whole story.

* * *

Tommy and Maria had a really nice porch. From the porch-swing, Ellie could look out on the town, could watch the loggers driving tractors through, could see the parents walking with their little kids. She had the book of Moomin comics on her lap, and some beef jerky as a snack, and this place was so _quiet._ Like, not quiet-quiet, but the sounds were from people, normal people. No gunshots, no infected, no bumps in the night. Instead, Ellie heard a white noise of conversation, tractors moving, dogs barking. She wondered if this was what the old times had sounded like.

The stables were so fucking cool. She really liked horses. She missed Callus too, but she didn’t want to think about him. No, she could think about the other horses instead. There was no use in making herself sad. She had an opportunity now, and she needed to be happy with that opportunity, even if sometimes it felt a little weird. Pillows? Yeah, super weird as a concept, but, hey, man, _pillows!_ And Maria said that Ellie could come help with the horses if she wanted to, and the sheep and cows as well. This place had so many animals, and Ellie really liked animals. Because she’d never seen a sheep up close before, she wanted to touch one here, see if its wool was as soft as she thought it might be. And she wanted to braid the horses’ manes, and she wanted to eat more of the _delicious_ food here, and she wanted to help out because she thought she should earn a place here. She wasn’t just Joel’s...friend, or whatever. No, she was a valuable person, right? She could be valuable here. And she wanted to be valuable here.

In the distance, she saw Joel and Tess heading back to the house. Joel had been stuck in Tommy’s clothes, all of which looked just a little too small on him, and Tess was wearing a button-down of Maria’s, an inch too long from Maria's height. Because of her injury, Tess couldn’t carry her backpack, so Joel had it over his back, the straps too tight around his arms. They looked so silly together. They looked like those paintings of dogs doing things that dogs can’t actually do, like playing poker. Without blood on their faces, with wounds that had healed, they looked strangely normal, like the people she saw in torn-apart advertisements from the old days. They could’ve been in a picture selling her, like, boots or something, but hardy boots, the kind made for winter. They would’ve fit in back then.

Tess touched his arm, then walked over to a bench beneath one of the shops’ eaves, sat down while Joel followed suit. Pressing her palms to her thighs, she leaned forward, tried to catch her breath. Yeah, she wasn’t in good shape, but she looked better than she had when Joel and Ellie last saw her. Back then, Tess had been red from head to toe, and she’d started to have a certain smell, something oozing from her wounds, made worse from their sweat and many days without bathing. Though Tess had held on for most of the trip, she let go once they were in Jackson, could hardly speak anymore and instead was left to writhe on whatever surface someone could set her down upon. Ellie hadn’t known if Tess understood what was happening, and in the end, was it better to understand why you were dying, or to die in a mindless confusion? Maybe Tess had felt half-asleep back then. It sounded nice to die feeling half-asleep

Reaching out, Joel touched Tess’s shoulder, a consoling gesture, _there, there,_ but then, he hesitated. Oof. Joel, you old hogey. Had Tess felt better, Ellie figured she would’ve raised an eyebrow and made a snide comment, but instead, Tess softened next to Joel, and Joel rubbed her shoulder, looking tense but trying to relax. That was kind of nice. 

Eventually, Tess stood up, and Joel was right behind her, following as she headed back toward the house. Ellie looked down at her comics, pretending she hadn’t watched.

“Hey, Ellie,” Joel said as he and Tess went up the porch-steps. “How were the horses?”

“Awesome,” she said, because, well, they had been awesome. “Where’ve you been?”

“The orchard at the edge of town,” Tess said, then smiled softly. Because Tess didn’t smile all that much, Ellie knew that this look was special, and meant for her specifically. That was nice of her. “Find something good to read?”

Holding up the comics, Ellie said, “It’s all in Swedish, so I can’t really tell what’s going on, but I like these pudgy little guys.”

Tess leaned over so that she could look down at the comics, then pointed to one line of dialogue.

“Maria taught me that word,” she said, pointing to _älskling._ “Means sweetheart.”

Joel furrowed his brow, asked, “Why’d she teach you that?”

“It’s a word reserved for people truly special to you,” Tess explained. “When Tommy asked Maria to teach him some words before they were married, she taught him that one, and he couldn’t pronounce it. The first letter makes an _eh_ sound, and he could only manage _elk._ He kept calling her _elk_ around me, so I asked why, and that was why.”

Ellie nodded, staring down at the page. There were Snork Maiden and Moomintroll, and Snork Maiden was cursing herself because she was an idiot, and then, Moomin found her and said her name with an exclamation point at the end, and Snork Maiden was so happy to see Moomin too. In celebration, they sat in some daisies and he called her sweetheart. She liked that the words _idiot_ and _sweetheart_ were so close together in the comic. That felt familiar.

“I’m going to go lie down,” Tess said, then opened the front door - never locked - and headed inside.

For a moment, Joel hesitated, looked down at Ellie’s comics, but before she could look up at him, ask why he was staring, he followed Tess into the house. The windows were open, so Ellie could hear him climb up each stair to join her.


	13. Nightmares (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [here's a companion playlist for this "arc" let's go cwazy](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA5tKk8qL2mih4IYkHwO0MJbQ95c_4vAC)

He dreamt of the capitol building. He could still remember how his jeans smelled afterward, mucky and lilypadded, like a swamp. She and that pistol of hers could stick a headshot with ease. Of course, she didn’t kill them all, and later, he would ask about how she survived, and she would say that she’d hidden, but why would she hide? She didn’t know why she had hidden, but there had been an alcove, a sectioned-off bit of wall; had she been taller, she wouldn’t have fit. But she’d known she would die, so why had she hidden? 

She found them again, in the subway system. She’d heard Ellie’s voice carry, and she insisted that they be quiet, she would swim with Ellie on her back in need be, let’s just get out of here. And once they found their way out of the subway system, Joel looked at her and saw the puckering wound on her neck, not dead yet. Tess asked Ellie to go look for bullets in the surrounding buildings, and once the girl was out of sight, she handed Joel her pistol. She asked him to make it quick.

But the dreams put him inside the capitol building, bodies of dead Fireflies surrounding them, Tess on her knees as if this were an execution. Looking up at him, she silently asked him to have mercy, but he didn’t know what _mercy_ would be. Her hands were behind her back. She wanted him to make it quick, so he pressed the tip of his gun against her forehead, the only touch he was allowed. As he pulled the trigger, her eyes stayed on him, the gun meaning nothing to her.

And he woke up shaking. He woke up thinking she was dead, but no, she was in bed next to him, see? But her back was to him, so he looked for an exit wound. Her forehead, he needed to see her forehead, so he forced himself out of bed, walked to the other side, knelt before her. Her cheek was squashed against her pillow, hands like little paws in front of her chest. He watched how the blankets moved as she breathed. On her neck, the chemical burn had scarred over, so at least now he didn’t see teethmarks.

Her eyes fluttered open. He was in love with her lashes. When she saw him before her, she looked confused, but a happy kind of confused. _Didn’t expect to see you there._

“Good morning,” she said, then reached one of her little paws out, touched his face. “Nice to see you.”

Then, she glanced at their alarm clock, groaned a little.

“Get back in bed,” she said. “We still have another hour.”

Though he knew he wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep, he didn’t want to leave this room, no, not this room where she was alive beyond her own body, shared clothes in the closet, two toothbrushes next to the sink, a book on her nightstand. No, he would get back in bed and stay there for the next hour, and she would be alive alongside him, wonderfully alive. And he wouldn’t need to insist that she tag along, that she wait until she started to turn before he killed her, and she wouldn’t be angry with him, wouldn’t see that insistence as a transgression. And he wouldn’t wait fearfully for the symptoms to come. He wouldn’t see her fear when she realized that she was never actually going to turn.

Scooting back toward him in bed, she wanted him to spoon her. Okay, he could do that. Fifty-five minutes left now. He could do that.

* * *

As she walked back home, she kept the same pace she had whenever she was about to punch someone. Her pantlegs were stained with blood, now dry, smelling like rot, and her hair was caked to the back of her neck, stiff strands forced together. At least from behind her he couldn’t see the blood spatter on her face, the drip below her right eye, Carrie at the prom. Around them, the town was either frantic or silent. In the top-floor windows of the houses they passed, parents and children looked out their windows, chatted back and forth, _what’s going on, mama?_ For a time like this, the settlement had security measures, protocols, and now, a two-bell alarm sounded, the bells repeating every ten seconds. Horde, the sounds told them, but from on the blood all over his shirt, he already knew that. 

This time of year, Hoback Pass was supposed to be quiet, and all last week, they never had a sighting on their patrols, marked in the log-books that everything was clear, nothing awry, same as usual. When they rode the horses up toward the pass, they hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary. Tess had been talking about making ravioli for dinner, fresh spinach and homemade ricotta, they had pasta dough from the neighbors and, well, make hay when the sun shines, right? And the days were starting to get shorter, the nights long before them, and when they woke in the morning for patrols, they were both cold and slow, wanting to curl up for five more minutes, the rest of the world being put on hold. They’d had walk-and-chew apples for breakfast as they headed over to the stables that morning, for they’d both dawdled while getting dressed, no time for a meal. They didn’t even pick up speed once they were on horseback.

Then, Tess slowed Echo’s trot, held up one finger as if giving an old-fashioned turn-signal. She heard something, and as he started to slow his horse down, they saw one infected rush out from the forest ahead of them, then another, then another. And then, they were surrounded, and Tess started firing before he could find his gun. Reaching for his holster, he gripped the gun in his hands, then looked up to find that Tess wasn’t on her saddle anymore, had been pulled off by seven or eight of the infected, a circle of snarling mouths above her thrashing body, and he couldn’t shoot any of them. No, infected flanked him on all sides, and Tess was immune. Tess was immune. Tess was immune. If he shot in that direction, he could kill her, so look away, look in the other direction, and the infected wanted him off of his horse too, and thank goodness Tess had gotten him to the gym. His thighs could crush pumpkins now, and one heel-thrust could tear apart an infected’s head, and he had a gun, he had a gun, he had ammunition and a gun, and he was a sharp shooter. He was the best shot in this whole goddamn forest. He fired once, then twice, shots to the head, he had a good angle from up here, and so long as he kicked off his attackers, prayed he wouldn’t be bitten, he could still shoot straight. For now, he would block out the sound of Tess screaming. He would stop listening. He would put these fuckers down, and he would stop listening. 

He didn’t know how much of the blood was her own. They’d rushed back to the settlement; he hadn’t had time to check her for bites, though he knew he was clean. As they headed toward their home, he could tell that people were staring, but the sirens went off every ten seconds, and there was no question of what had happened. The blood spatter turning Tess’s whole face red had come from an intense fight, and now, they needed troops. They needed the whole fucking arsenal. But once Joel and Tess had briefed Maria on the horde, she’d thankfully dismissed them, looking them up and down and telling them to go home and wash up. _That’s enough for one day,_ she said, and Tess nodded once, then turned on her heels and headed back home as if she were going to beat up some poor soul there. That was absolutely enough for one day.

In the entryway of their home, he could still hear the sirens. He could still hear Tess screaming. In front of him, she was silent as she pulled her shirt over her head, unbuttoned her jeans, tore the wretched clothing off. With all of the blood dried on, the garments made a crunching noise in her hands. She wasn’t going to put these down anywhere except in a hot water bath with lots of soap.

“I need you to check me,” she said.

Her underwear was bloody, her bra too, but still, there were clear marks from where her clothes had been, a distinctive line, bloody and then less bloody. Gently, he brought his fingers to her skin, trailed his hands over her body while she watched, but no, there weren’t any bites. They were in the clear. They were fine. They were going to be fine. Yes, they were going to be fine, and she seemed to know that already because she walked barefoot into the washing room, her bloodied hands lifting a wash basin into the sink. Using her elbows, she turned the hot water tap on, then picked up their bottle of detergent, used her teeth to open the lid, and haphazardly poured soap into the basin. 

“Bring me your clothes,” she said, the most basic of instructions. Looking up, she met his gaze, and she could see right through him. He couldn’t hide from her. Swallowing hard, he nodded, then started to unbutton his shirt.

When they showered, she let him wash her hair. Or, really, she asked him to wash her hair, and she had the kindness to act as if she were the one in need. No, she was fine. She was fine. How was she fine? Flanked on all sides, she’d been writhing on the ground, shots fired haphazardly, unwilling to save her bullets, and as he tried to salvage his wretched life, he realized that her immunity didn’t matter in that moment. No, the infected could still kill her. They could disembowel her, bite through her neck, leave her beheaded, and he couldn’t do anything to stop them. If he shot in their direction, he might hit her instead, and he couldn’t take that risk. But she wanted him to wash her hair. Maria had cut it last week, and though Maria had done a better job than he ever had, he missed cutting her hair. In the end, maybe she wanted him to touch her too, but running his hands through her wet hair, watching the water run red in the shower they shared, he knew that he needed this, to be close to her, to be in a small, safe space, lights on above them, steam fogging their windows. Squeezing liquid soap into his hands, he stood behind her in the spray, lathered her hair, the suds turning red in his hands. None of the blood was hers. The blood that went down their drain was the blood of the dead, and together, they stood strong, not broken just yet. Distantly, the alarm sounded, but they weren’t broken just yet.

Using an old toothbrush, she scrubbed the blood out from under his fingernails. She rubbed away the spatter above his eyebrow. In comparison to her, he was clean, but she didn’t want to leave him any reminders. When they dried off, their towels stayed white. There, all done. Now, they could get dressed and go about their day as if nothing had happened this morning. Back in the QZ, they’d heard plenty of alarms, and most of the time, they ignored what each one meant. Once, she even started singing along to them, making the words up as she went, _FEDRA thinks there’s a raid, I think they just wanna get paid,_ and she couldn’t hold a tune to save her life, and he laughed at her and said that in another lifetime he’d wanted to be a singer when he grew up, and she said that she’d wanted to be a ballerina. And then, the power went out, but the alarm kept sounding, and that night had been a tense combination of dark and loud, perfect and imperfect for sleeping. In bed, she started making up another tune, then told him to sing the next line, but he refused because he knew her well but not _that_ well, and she called him a spoilsport.

She wore jeans and the green sweater he’d found in the cabins, the front hem tucked messily into her pants, and for once, she was wearing her own socks. Hair still wet, sleeves scrunched up, she looked normal. Before she left their bedroom, she hesitated, hung in the doorway for a moment.

“You hungry?” she asked, leaning in the jamb, looking so casual. 

He held his hands in fists at his sides so that she wouldn’t see his fingers shake as he tried to button his shirt.

“Sure,” he said even though he wasn’t, not really. 

She could see through him. She knew he was lying, but still, she nodded, then headed downstairs, and when he joined her in the dining room, she had cheese and homemade rosemary crackers on a plate, a smear of raspberry jam at the edge, a snack to share. Today, she wasn’t going to push him, would instead let him sit alongside her at the table and choose whether or not he wanted to partake. 

“Think we should go find Maria,” Tess said, but there was no haste in her voice. Though they were off duty for now, they ought to help later. If need be, they could clean up the aftermath. They wouldn’t back down from another attack.

Nodding, he took a cracker and a slice of cheese, more for her benefit than his. She followed suit, spread jam on her cracker. Though she loved salty-sweet, he’d never understood the appeal.

“I’m not mad at you,” she said, and he held his breath. No, he didn’t want to talk about this right now. “I understand. You did the right thing, exactly what you should’ve done. I’m mad at the whole world right now, but I’m not mad at you.”

He nodded, tried to play the right part.

“I know,” he said, though he wasn’t sure he was telling the truth.

“They were heading west.” She talked about _them_ as if they were nothing, negligible, some group she didn’t care about. “Maria’s probably sending out warnings.”

Once before, they’d watched her go through that process, a large group of people gathered at the outposts, ham and CB radios hooked up to the power, the same messages being repeated in a hypnotic way, Morse code punched out in the background. Though the mountains limited their range, they at least had an antenna, could reach parts of Idaho and Montana with important messages. If the horde was heading out of town, then surely Maria would gather broadcasters for distress signals. 

“How’re the strings holding up?” she asked. 

He’d found a neglected guitar in one of the houses on their patrols last week, and though the strings had been broken, some of the frets coming loose, the model was nice, way too nice for him to ever afford, so he brought it home with them, then later found strings. Though he’d never strung his own guitar before, he had a book on the process, and in the end, skills like that couldn’t be too hard, right? Or else the instrument would have been a footnote in history, and folk music would never have existed. Though skills required teaching, no surviving skill could be impossible. 

“Well enough,” he said. He wanted to thank her for trying, but he didn’t have the energy to do so. “Maybe I’ll play you something later.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

Outside, the alarm still sounded, and she looked toward the windows, then started to hum.

* * *

They were stuck in the front pews of the church, dinner left in half-warm casserole dishes on the backmost seats. At the front of the church, Maria and Tommy stood, her trusty leather-bound notebook in her hands, the distress signal written down in both Morse code and English. Though the meeting had been called for the able-bodied adults, Ellie and her friends were there too, and in the back of the room, children were asking their parents how long this would take. But at least the food had been worthwhile. That afternoon, Tess had complained while cutting up eggplant and zucchini, damning the ratatouille she was being forced to bring, but at least the food had been good.

Earlier, the settlement had heard an SOS from another group, people living on a place Joel knew as the Ranch. Before the outbreak, the Ranch had been a vacation spot, rural enough to be beautiful but upscale enough to not feel rural, and there were small cabins there, all situated around farmland, a big barn, and a community center. Though the settlement was small, only five or six families, they’d traded grain with Jackson from time to time, their fields bigger, their horses built to work. And the signal had been brief and haunting, _under attack, help needed,_ followed by the repeated taps and pauses of the maritime SOS code. The horde had been heading west, right toward the Ranch; it didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened.

For now, the issue had been contained in Jackson, and though many had gone beyond the walls to fight, all had returned with only minor injuries, no bites, no deaths. A success, all things considered, but now, there was a distress call coming from a neighboring settlement, a friendly settlement. As they did in times of duress, the people in the church would put this to a vote: should there or should there not be contact made with their friends at the Ranch? And though most people in the room didn’t know the inhabitants of that settlement, hands still shot up in favor of offering aid, Joel and Tess joining the crowd. After the morning they’d had, they couldn’t refuse to help.

Maria wanted volunteers. Of course, Tommy’s hand went up, and Tess’s too, and though Joel hesitated at first, he followed suit, and maybe asking for volunteers had been purely performative; Maria looked at them in the pews, and in an instant, Joel knew her choice, even if she wrote names down and pretended to think about her options. Because Tommy knew the other settlement well, had traded with them plenty of times, he would go, if only for mediation, and Maria knew that Tess was one of the most lethal people in the room. Together, Tommy and Tess could take on the horde, then help the survivors, had any of them been left behind. Tonight, he would help Tess pack, and unless something went wrong, he would only spend a night apart from her. There was no reason to be nervous. He swore he wasn’t nervous.

The meeting ended; Tess went in search of their casserole dish while Joel sat with Tommy, the rest of the church emptying. Maria came over and sat down alongside her husband, then leaned forward, brought the two men into a conversation.

“I was thinking of having you two go,” Maria said, looking at Tommy and then at Joel. “Two horses, leave at first light. I can send you with medical supplies and extra food, but I think we all know what you’ll find.”

For a moment, Joel didn’t know what she meant, _you two,_ but then, he swallowed hard. No, Maria wouldn’t send Tess out, not after Teton Village. Though Tess had killed seven people in order to save herself and Joel, had proven her capability, she couldn’t go up against another group, not because she was incapable but because she didn’t deserve that pain. At least Joel had had the luxury of forgetting. At least his recovery from the ambush had pertained to a concussion and little else.

Of course, Tommy accepted, and Joel couldn’t comprehend the rest of the conversation, instead looked over at the pews full of food and found Tess reaching for their casserole dish. They had a matching set she had become attached to, insisting on having all of their tupperwares returned, and as she picked up the dish, he watched her smooth her thumb over the floral print on its side, check the contents to see how much of the ratatouille had been eaten. And though Tess could burn much of anything in the kitchen, she’d found a ratatouille recipe in an old cookbook of theirs months ago, had been shocked that they had every last ingredient necessary, even fresh basil; when the eggplants were ripe, she brought some home, ecstatic as she took tomatoes off of their plants, plucked basil from the herb garden she’d started on their kitchen windowsills, and for dinner that night, they feasted, roasted vegetables with fresh garlic, crusty bread on the side. She could barely scramble eggs, but she could make a mean ratatouille. When she caught him staring, she angled the dish toward him, looking so proud that it was empty.

“Maria,” he said, though his gaze was elsewhere, “I want Tess to join us.”

* * *

They were packing up food for the trip when they heard a knock at the door. Tess furrowed her brow, _it’s too late for that,_ then headed from the kitchen to the entryway while Joel stuffed a container of oats into his pack.

“Hey,” he heard Tess say, and her voice was soft; Ellie was at the door. “Everything alright?”

“One of my lightbulbs went out.” Yes, it was Ellie. “I was wondering if you had any spares.”

“It’s late,” Tess said, and then, she and Ellie were walking through the house, heading into the laundry room. After living in the QZ for so long, they both almost hoarded lightbulbs, the room filled with old boxes, canned tomatoes, any extra things they could manage. _You can take a smuggler out of the city,_ he thought as Tess headed into the laundry room, as Ellie leaned against a wall in the kitchen. “You should head to bed.”

“I will,” Ellie said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Promise.”

She was wearing the alien sweater Maria had made for her, little green martian heads making a circle around her chest and shoulders. He’d been there when Maria dyed the yarn using a variety of plants, and after all of the times he and Tess had washed that sweater, he wondered how the green hadn’t come out by now.

“Hey, Joel,” she said, then nodded toward the containers on the kitchen counter. “Packing up?”

“Yes,” Joel said, but Ellie didn’t seem like she wanted to talk. No, she really just needed a lightbulb, and he was in her way. “Gonna be gone for a few days.”

“Cool,” Ellie said, nodding.

Over the summer, she’d been making a lot of progress with the guitar, had even learned how to write down the chords for music she found on cassette. She was good at the lyrical fingerings, ones he’d never been able to figure out, and she would pick out the singing, using her hands as a substitute for her voice. And she could sing alright, but she hadn't known if she could manage the notes, so she asked him how to tell what was good and bad, and he told her to have Tess sing for her, for then she'd know. Sometimes, the chamber choir would host a performance in the church, and they could sing, really sing, voices blending beautifully, an otherworldly sound in a place wonders had left. Maria had learned a certain kind of cattle-call long ago, he couldn’t remember the name, a very high note sung so that the cows would come home. If there was anything he missed about the old world, it was the music, or at least the diversity of the music. He would kill for a Top 40 radio station. He would love to put back in the soundtrack CD for the werewolf movie Sarah loved, a soundtrack that he begrudgingly admitted was good. And sure, they still had music now, and there were singers in town, and he had three guitars of his own, two playable. He loved the rush he felt when he found sheet music, a child’s book of lessons, handwritten chords with no title for the song on a piece of paper. Around town, people still sang and danced, and there were instruments, and people who could play those instruments, but he missed music all the same. He missed radio stations. He missed driving Sarah to her piano lessons and missed when he would turn up “What It Takes” every time it came on the radio, then pretend he hadn’t sung along afterward. He missed the music that played in medical clinic waiting rooms. He missed background noise.

Ellie liked the Indigo Girls, had been trying to learn one of their songs when suddenly she stopped having time for lessons. At first, Joel thought Ellie had been put off by the - and he still struggled to use this word - wedding, but no, she acted fine around Tess, and when they all had dinner together, Ellie seemed as if everything were the same. But if he mentioned coming by for a lesson, she would say that she was busy, maybe some other time; eventually, she truncated the line to _I’m busy_ and left it at that. He wasn’t naive; he knew that she wanted independence, that she didn’t need him anymore, but...he didn’t know how to finish that thought. He knew better than to expect something from her. He didn’t want to think about this anymore.

“It’s the lamp, right?” Tess asked from the laundry room, and Ellie called _yeah_ back. “Figured as much.”

Returning to the kitchen, Tess held out two lightbulbs, then nodded back toward their stock.

“If it burns out again, just take another one,” Tess said as Ellie took the bulbs. “Door’s always unlocked.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Ellie left as quickly as she’d come, and Tess returned to their packs, sticking provisions in the outside pockets. Though they’d have saddlebags full of supplies, they both hated feeling unprepared, so they packed plenty, plus rain gear just in case. The days had grown cooler, so there were mittens in the pockets of their bags, extra socks stuffed into crevasses, sweaters set out to wear in the morning. Maria had permitted Tess to join the party so long as she and Joel shared a horse, and thankfully, Winnie could carry their weight. He wouldn’t even need to rein, for Tess would be sitting on the saddle while he sat behind her. If anything, he was the dead weight of the group, but Tess hadn’t acted that way when he asked her to join. No, she’d taken a moment to internalize what he meant, then nodded once and asked what supplies she should pack. Maybe she understood him in that split second, or maybe, in the end, she didn’t need to understand at all.

“It’s late,” she said, closing the buckles on her pack, leaving it atop their tiny kitchen table. “Long day.”

He left his pack alongside hers, then turned off the kitchen lights, followed her upstairs. She’d started wearing her hair in a bun at night, and as he brushed his teeth, he watched her twirl her ponytail, secure an elastic around the little roll. Though he figured there was some kind of string theory towel-as-a-hair-turban magic going on, he still had no idea how one elastic could hold all of her hair in exactly that position. How could a sphere be spanned by a stretchy little circle? It didn’t make any sense to him. When she caught him staring, he quickly looked away, but in his peripheries, he saw her smiling.

Last week, they’d put on their flannel sheets, warm for winter. Though they’d specifically asked that no one give them wedding presents, they’d received a beautiful wool-felt blanket from some of their neighbors, and having that blanket between their sheets and comforter made it hard for them to get up for patrols in the mornings. He’d never thought he could have a bed worth drowning in, but now, he woke up in the morning and thought _five more minutes_ as many times as he could before the alarm went off. He loved that, even in the darkest of times, he’d been able to find the world’s most comfortable bed, and been able to sleep in it with her every night.

Lights off, both of them tucked in, he thought he should explain himself. He thought he should mention why he wanted her to come, but in the end, he didn’t know why. Instead, he thought of the cursed cabins by the ski area, of her words afterward. _Next time, we’re sticking together._ In a way, he was keeping a promise to her, but still, he knew that asking her to come had been selfish. No matter what reasoning he had, he wanted her to go with him, and despite the ambush in Teton Village, she agreed. Maybe she’d thought of the cursed cabins too, or maybe she’d just wanted a few days off from work, but regardless of the reasoning, they were going together. And with Tommy, of course. Three was a good, solid number. They could make three work.

“Stop thinking so loudly,” she said alongside him in bed.

It was late, and they needed to wind down. _He_ needed to wind down. At least they’d already packed. Closing his eyes, he tried to find sleep, but instead, he noticed that there was light below one of their bedroom windows. 

With a fresh new lightbulb in her lamp, Ellie was still awake.


	14. Nightmares (Part II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so. throwback thursday to when i said this would be spoiler free (and also casual and not a real wip and i would add to it periodically But Let's Overlook All Of That For Now). turns out this is not spoiler free for part 2! which i guess won't change anything because i doubt anyone reading this doesn't already know the story in part 2. but either way. topics from part 2 are brought up in this chapter (and probably others haha whoops) so if you wish not to see spoilers then click away.

They were back in the capitol building. She was on her knees again, but this time, she held the pistol, the tip pressed to the side of her head. She wanted a witness.

“I need decent last words,” she said, staring up at him.

Around them, the bodies of soldiers bled out onto the floor. He wondered if famous art had been housed here, an important place full of important things, and he wondered if they could go elsewhere, execute her in front of some mural of American history. Or maybe he just wanted to hold off for a little while. Maybe he wanted to sit with her on this bloody floor and ask her to tell him a story about her life, the time when she felt happiest.

Or maybe he already knew that story. Where she grew up, there had been a creek behind her house, and she and her brothers would venture there and play in the water, catching frogs, finding the roundest and smoothest rocks, skipping stones in the places where the water ran flat. By the end of the day, her legs would be caked with mud, and her hair would be a mess, and her mother would scold the children, their clothes were soaked, they needed to go out back and hose themselves down. But the hose led them to another adventure; if someone put their thumb over the spray and tilted the hose up in the sunlight, they could make rainbows.

He looked out the window, wondering if they could see a rainbow from here, and the shot rang out. She didn’t have him as a witness.

“Joel?”

And Tess, the real Tess, looming above in him in bed, was shaking his shoulder, trying to wake him up.

“Joel, it’s just a nightmare,” she said, voice hushed. “Just a nightmare. Not real."

Blinking awake, he looked up at her, hair tied back in a bun, eyes wide. His Tess, the one who slept with her hair in a bun and wore his shirts to bed. She was different enough from the Tess he’d known in Boston that he could promise himself that this version of her was real, but she was similar enough that he so easily loved her. 

“Sorry,” he managed, and she laughed awkwardly.

“Only you would apologize for having a nightmare.”

In three minutes, their alarm would sound, and then, they would be off to the stables, meeting Tommy there. Because Tommy had early morning business to attend to - Joel wondered if he and Maria ever slept - Tommy was going to bring by sandwiches for breakfast. Today would be alright. Tess sat up in bed, then headed over to the closet, put his shirt into their laundry basket and went in search of the sweater Maria had knit for her. Today would be alright.

* * *

“Wish we had something to listen to,” Tess said. “Not a huge fan of this silence.”

Though the ride from Jackson to the Ranch was only a few hours, the distance short but the terrain unforgiving, he felt as if the mountains around them were coming closer, squeezing them into the valley, as if Joel, Tommy, and Tess were Han, Luke, and Leia stuck in the trash compactor. Oh, that was another movie he needed to show Ellie, except not the prequels. He thought Ellie would like Princess Leia a lot.

When they left Jackson, Tess had been at the reins, Joel sitting behind the saddle and holding onto her hips in order to stay on the horse. Thankfully, Winnie could take their weight, and Tess rode with such ease that he felt for once stable on a horse, even without a saddle to sit on. They’d taken the cliffs earlier in the day, led the horses down the steeper inclines, and now, they wove through the trees in a thick forest, making their way toward a wide, open field. And the silence around them was eerie, the sound of autumn leaves rustling in the breeze making the three of them wince, was someone there? But no, all they saw were red and yellow leaves, a sea of colors, bright and at peak in the valley. The day was cool enough that Tess had kept her sweater on ever since the morning, an early gift from Maria coming in handy, and he still wore his gloves, not wanting his fingers to get cold. If he could pair the day with a song, if they were two kids sharing a Walkman, sitting side by side and folding a pair of headphones so each of them could hear from one of the speakers, he would play “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” no question. Actually, he ought to think of something less predictable, maybe “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” Mary Travers had such a voice. 

“When I was in high school,” Tess said, hands relaxed on the reins, even these tightly packed trees didn’t make her nervous on a horse, “my brother was driving a rig, shipping stuff, can’t remember what. During my spring break, it was either take calls for my dad’s business or join him, so we went along I-95 together. Boring as shit road, I have to say, but he would take out audiobooks from the library for entertainment.”

Just beyond the trees, there was the big field, and beyond that field would be the first fences marking the settlement, grains blowing in the breeze, the harvest season coming and going. On his own horse, Tommy trotted ahead, not one for conversation; he too had a sweater from Maria on, but his was cabled, complicated and thick, nice and warm, she must’ve put so much time into knitting that one.

“Anyway,” Tess said, “we finished _Great Expectations_ midway through the week, and we didn’t have anything else, so it was just me and my iPod. I swear, we went through every song I had on there, and then went through it all again, and then again. But it was fun to be together, and the scenery was nice sometimes. West Virginia was pretty, I remember that much. Sometimes, he would need me to get out and direct him when he backed into tight spots in rural areas, so it was just me in my flip-flops telling him what to do. Felt like a boss.”

“I miss stuff like that,” he said behind her. “When I got my first MP3 player, I thought it was the coolest thing.”

She laughed, “Yeah, I got a hand-me-down, but from a different brother. Thought I was the shit.”

“What would you listen to?”

“Normal stuff, I guess,” she gave. “Joni Mitchell, Alanis Morissette. Either stuff from CDs my family had, or whatever I could find on the internet. When I downloaded Acid Rap all by myself, I thought I was a genius.”

“No Taylor Swift?”

She glanced back at him, then said, “Asshole.”

Once they reached the field, Tess made Winnie canter, and the mountains looked so close to the clouds, just so high, and the sky was blue, and the leaves on the trees had changed in color, autumn bright around them. Now, they needed to prepare for the winter, needed to stock grain, preserve fruits and vegetables, fill their freezer so that they would stay fed through the cold season. But they wouldn’t starve, for they were two people in a group of many; even if they ran out of canned vegetables and meat, they could still find more at a neighbor’s house, and could even find a friendly meal there, food tasting better when it’s shared. Their safety was both real and an illusion. For now, they were warm, they wouldn’t starve, and they had each other. And they had these mountains, these beautiful mountains, and when the sun set, they would stare out their bedroom windows and watch the pinkish colors on the horizon, the snow-caps high above turned to the color of cotton candy. What more could they need?

When the settlement came into view, Tess slowed the horse, rode alongside Tommy, watched as he surveyed the land. There were wooden fences surrounding fields of vegetables, but the fields had been turned down for the season, footprints through the mud. In the distance, they could hear cows, and when Joel squinted, he could make out distant cabins beyond the fields, so small, the size of studio apartments. He’d known this had been a rural resort before the outbreak, but still, those cabins seemed so tiny, especially compared to the too-big house he and Tess shared.

“Would lookouts have spotted us by now?” Tess asked Tommy, and he nodded, ponytail moving up and down on his neck. 

At first, Joel hadn’t understood why Maria let Tommy grow his hair out so long, but according to Tess’s intel - she sometimes complained that she had a face that made people want to tell her their secrets - Maria liked the ponytail, liked it a lot. After Tess told Joel that, he mentioned that maybe Tess could follow suit and not give him a haircut that month, and Tess had, in a word, disagreed.

“No one’s come to greet us,” Tommy said, half-sarcastic. “I’m not sure anyone will.”

“Which way, then?” Joel asked, and Tommy pointed ahead, the cabins beyond the fields. 

“Search the area,” Tommy said, “and I’ll follow the perimeter. Shout if you run into trouble.”

Tess nodded, then kicked Winnie into a trot, riding alongside the fenced-in fields and toward the houses. Looking down, he saw footprints in the mud, trodden grass, darkened patches that he didn’t want to assume were blood. There had been traffic through here. Where did this settlement keep their horses? Did they have horses? Below, there weren’t any hoofprints, just indentations from feet and shoes. Maybe they didn’t have horses. 

“The fields shouldn’t be this empty,” Tess said, voice quiet as they followed the fence.

“How do you know?” Joel asked, but she took a deep breath, shook her head.

“Just a feeling.”

The cabins were quiet. Each one was built from log timber, a little deck at the front, so rustic. Back in the day, people must’ve paid top dollar to stay here, right in the heart of a national forest, but now, the place was overgrown, woodpecker holes in the beams, the door-hinges shaking in the breeze. Tess dismounted, and Joel followed suit, tying Winnie’s reins to support timber on the deck; with her gun holstered, her knife in its sheath, Tess headed to the door first, leading him in. Leaning against the front door, she listened for any sounds, then met his gaze and shook her head.

Had there been anyone left in the settlement, they would’ve encountered people by now, but no, they went through the cabin and found the place empty, the woodstove in the middle of the room full of ash, the bed partially unmade. The floral rug, the timber-backed chairs, the old-fashioned dressers, everything in these cabins had been built to make the place look rustic, brought back from the old times, and now, the furniture was being used again, shirts in the drawers, the old chairs matching newer handmade ones. The past had been preserved with abstraction. On makeshift bookshelves, he found _The Red Badge of Courage_ and _The Modern Forager’s Field Guide to Medicinal Herbs._ The quilt on the bed looked handmade, the stitches intricate. Someone had lived here. Actually, two someones, for there were pairs of shoes by the door, shoes in different sizes. 

They froze when they heard sound from above, and looking up, they saw a loft, how could they have missed that? Leading up, there was a wooden ladder; though he hesitated, she started climbing up, and after she disappeared into the loft above, he heard a growl, then a gunshot. Though infected tended to be poor climbers, maybe this one had climbed up before the disease took over, had been hiding there ever since. Climbing back down, Tess looked tired, as if shooting one infected had taken all of her energy.

“Let’s keep looking,” she said, then headed out of the first cabin. “There still might be someone.”

* * *

They cleared all of the cabins. After Tommy searched the perimeter, he went into the settlement’s shed-turned-radio-station, tried to contact any survivors with no luck. He reported their findings to Maria, no surprises. All they had left to search was the makeshift community center, what once had been a check-in for the ranch resort. Joel could remember places like this one, a weekend getaway, a sense of living off of the land. Back then, people had really glamorized the word _rustic_ when what they really meant was white paint, exposed brick, and mason jars. He would kill for a cup of coffee, or a Snickers bar, or _cinnamon,_ just cinnamon, something to put on top of pancakes. At least Maria’s family had been homesteaders all their lives, solar panels on their roof, cows in the barn, fresh milk in the fridge; while he, his brother, and Tess winced as chickens were slaughtered, Maria lifted and swung the ax with ease, cycle of life, done this a million times before. Though he figured he would get used to the settlement eventually, feel comfortable living off of what they’d been allowed, he figured he would never get over the urge to find the nearest coffee shop and order the biggest cup he could get, and a breakfast sandwich too.

The community center had a screen door before its open main one, and as Tommy opened the screen door, Tess held her gun at the ready, prepared for a strike. But the place was silent, the floor cleared off and then filled with blankets and pillows, the wooden check-in desk holding a Super 8 projector on top. 

“Let there be light,” Tess said, then flicked the lightswitch, illuminated the room.

Before the attack, there had been a celebration here, a big group gathering; everyone in the settlement had come together to watch a movie off of an old projector. How had they even found that projector? He’d only even seen Super 8s in pawn shops. While Tommy cleared the edges of the room, Tess stepped over the quilts, the pillows, the children’s toys and went to the projector. Did she know how to work it? She nudged the thing, then hit it a little - so, no, she didn’t know how to work it - and suddenly, the projection began, black-and-white film developing onto the wall in front of the Super 8, the audio coming out before the image. Humphrey Bogart’s voice, telling Ingrid Bergman to go, get on the plane, we’ll always have Paris. And Joel stood alongside Tess as she watched the projection, greyscale faces, the way Old Hollywood actors tilted their heads as if they were on the _To Have and Have Not_ poster, _Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday, you’ll understand that._

And as the scene played, he could imagine the carnage outside, blood in the grass, bites on necks, the horde growing larger. Did the people here try to fight back, or did they sequester themselves in this place, Bogart and Bergman acting as their guiding lights? Outside, a war raged on, but the families left on the inside, people who lived in tiny cabins and shared films together, watched as actors from a hundred years ago said their fateful goodbye. A wartime sacrifice, one that didn’t make sense to modern audiences, no, romances of the twenty-first century had been about triumph, the love triangle tilting toward the two who were good at heart. In 1942, the truest sign of love was letting go. 

Behind them, they heard a crash, and raising their guns, they turned around, Tess shouting _show yourself,_ the film’s music kept playing, _here’s looking at you, kid._ From beneath the check-in desk, a woman emerged, her mousy hair reaching down to her hips, the night-dress she wore white and modest. Holding up her hands, she asked them not to shoot, and showed them that her wrist was bloody, oozing from a bite. The settlement had exactly one survivor, and she wouldn’t survive long.

“Please don’t shoot,” she said, but she sounded exhausted, figured they wouldn’t listen. “I’m still...here.”

Though Tess lowered her gun, Joel didn’t, and when Tommy returned to the entrance, he didn’t lower his either.

“We’re not going to shoot,” Tess said, then side-eyed Joel, silently asked him to put his gun down. No, he would _not_ listen to that command. “We don’t mean you any harm.”

The woman glanced at the two men, said, “You sure about that?”

“We’re from the settlement in Jackson,” Tess said, sheathing her gun. Of course she would be reckless right now. “We radioed in response to your distress signal. We thought we might find survivors.”

The woman shook her head, her dark eyes haunted. No, there were no other survivors. 

“I’m Tess,” Tess said, then nodded toward the two men, “and this is my husband, Joel, and his brother, Tommy.”

The film kept playing, and he assumed that that was why he felt disoriented, and not because Tess had called him her husband.

“Nice to meet you,” the woman said. “I’m Emma.”

Limply, she held out a hand for a shake, but no one took her hand.

“I’m not entirely sure what to do,” Emma said, smiling awkwardly, afraid but not wanting anyone else to know. “I know I don’t have long. I don’t wish to hurt any of you.”

For a moment, Tess was silent, but then, she looked to Joel, a quiet agreement. If he didn’t do what she said, then she would be very, _very_ upset.

“I want you and Tommy to head that way,” she tilted her head in the direction of the most open portion of the room, away from the screen door, “and then, Emma and I are going to walk outside.”

No, that was a bad idea. That was a really bad idea.

“Tess-”

“Joel, go to the edge of the room,” she repeated, patience spent. 

Emma could still hurt Tess, immunity be damned. One good bite, and Tess’s arteries might be severed, or she might be disemboweled, or her leg might come clean off. Until they’d encountered the horde, he’d thought she might be immortal in that respect, immune to all infected, but no, she was as human as anyone else, as culpable. One good bite, and Emma could kill Tess, cordyceps be damned.

But when Tommy headed to the edge of the room, Joel followed. And he watched as Tess led Emma through the screen door, a modest distance between them, the two women heading outside. There would be an execution here, a bullet through the woman’s brain, and this time, Tess’s gun would be in her own hand, and the shot wouldn’t go through her own head. This time, Tess had control.

Once the women were far beyond the screen door, Joel returned to the center of the room, tried to figure out how to turn off the projector. Bogart and Bergman would only make today worse. While Joel worked, Tommy came up alongside him, leaned back against the check-in desk. 

“This isn’t the first time Maria’s sent me to an abandoned settlement,” Tommy said, elbows on the desk. He said the word _abandoned_ as if the inhabitants had simply left for a vacation. “From time to time, a place is destroyed in an afternoon. Not unheard of.”

“Cycle of life,” Joel gave, the projector finally turning off. When he looked up, he saw Tess and Emma beyond the screen door, the two women sitting in the grass outside and staring up at the mountains. Or, rather, Emma was staring up at the mountains while Tess braided the woman’s ever-so-long hair, deft fingers against the woman’s scalp, Tess’s mouth moving, quiet, tame conversation. 

“I’m just saying,” Tommy gave, “that this will happen again, and though we’ve taken so many precautions, we have to accept that this might someday be us.”

Joel huffed. “I accepted that a long time ago.”

Outside, Tess took a hairband off of her wrist, then wrapped the band around the end of the woman’s braid. All done. Standing up, Tess offered Emma a hand, and though Emma hesitated at first, she eventually let Tess help her stand up, bitten hand to unbroken one. Tess looked toward the screen door, then pulled Emma away from there, out of Joel’s line of sight.

The gunshot made him wince. A beat, then two, and then Tess walked back up to the screen door, her pistol sheathed again.

“Help me find a shovel,” she called inside, and this time, Joel listened.

* * *

Joel and Tess stood above the grave, looking down at the gradient of leaves Tess had used to cover the dirt, the woman’s name written in sticks on top of the leaves. A fitting grave, all things considered. He wondered where the other dead had been buried in this settlement, if they’d been buried at all.

“I can’t imagine how she felt,” Tess said, “being left alone like that. And everyone around you became infected, then headed for the hills. And she’s left here all alone, not knowing what’s going on but knowing what will happen next.”

After the capitol building, after the subways, she’d knelt before him and asked for mercy. And then, Ellie returned with bullets Tess had told her to go find, demanded _what the fuck,_ and said that they couldn’t kill Tess, holy fuck, what was he doing? And though Tess tried to talk the girl down, said that the inevitable would come, swore with a cracking voice that she wouldn’t let herself turn, Ellie refused to watch an execution. No, everyone turns within two days, right? So two days, then. They could all manage two days. And for those next two days, Tess stared daggers at Ellie, stood several feet away from the others, feared for the worst, but the infection never took over. 

They were in the car when she admitted to him that she thought she might not die.

“The wound’s scabbed over,” she said, then tugged down her shirt-collar as if he could see what she meant while he drove. “I feel...lucid. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.”

“Well,” he said, and left it at that. 

“I don’t know what this means.”

“I don’t think either of us should speculate.”

“Joel, I…”

Tess glanced back; Ellie had fallen asleep in the backseat.

“I’m not prepared for this,” Tess said, shaking her head. “I’m not...I can’t be whatever she is.”

He sighed, gave, “I don’t think you have a choice.”

“I thought the soldiers would kill me,” she said, and he thought she might not be listening to what he was saying, that she might be thinking out loud and overwhelming herself in the process. “I thought that that would be the end, and a decent fucking end, right? Better way to go than most get. But it never happened, and now…”

Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm herself down. 

“I don’t know how to keep going,” she said, and he felt her gaze bore into him. She wanted him to lead.

“We’ll find our way to Tommy’s,” he said, leading. “There, we’ll have some answers.”

“But what if he doesn’t have any answers?” she asked, and he told her to try and get some rest, he would drive the whole way, she really ought to sleep. And though he could tell she didn’t want to, she complied.

That wasn’t a dream. No, that was real, Tess on her knees, her gun in his hand. She asked him for mercy, and he thanked God he hadn’t needed to learn what mercy meant to her. If Ellie hadn’t returned, he would have shot Tess, and in the end, maybe that would’ve been a profound act of love, far deeper than any wedding. She’d asked him to help her die, then, he’d asked for direction, her direction, her last will and testament. Had he loved her less, he would’ve pulled the gun away from her forehead long before Ellie returned.

“I don’t think she was afraid when she died,” Joel said, though he wasn’t sure if Tess realized he’d watched. “You braided her hair.”

“Yes,” Tess nodded down at the grave, “I did.”

“I think the most powerful thing we can do nowadays is take away someone else’s fears.”

She quirked a lip, bittersweet smile, then reached for his hand, entwined their fingers. 

“I think you’re right,” she said, and beyond the mountains, the sun began to set.

“Feels like I should be singing ‘Amazing Grace’ or something,” he said. 

It felt wrong to hold hands above a grave, especially when her hands had put this person in their grave.

“If you want to, then I think she’ll like it.”

Flustered, he said, “I wasn’t offering.”

“It’s the thought that counts.”

She squeezed his hand. Above them, the solar glare made him squint, and the day was too bright for him to feel sad, but he felt sad anyway for reasons he didn’t want to know.

* * *

They took shifts sleeping in the community center, each of them keeping watch outside, Tess’s sleeping bag currently empty alongside Joel’s. Though Tommy slept soundly a few feet away, Joel had spent the last couple of hours with his eyes wide open. He didn’t want to sleep in a graveyard. He didn’t want to have dreams. Why not let Tess off of her shift early? As quietly as he could, he got out of his sleeping bag, then left the community center, shutting the door gently. Outside, the sun had started to rise, light blue sky on the edges of the horizon; he could see her sitting in the grass just beyond the nearest fence, facing the settlement’s perimeters and the mountains surrounding the valley. Her bun was falling apart, so she took the elastic out, rewound her hair and secured the elastic again. In her peripheries, she caught a glimpse of him, so she turned back to face him, brow furrowed, She still had another hour, at least.

“Go inside,” he said as he reached her side of the fence. “Get some rest before we head out.”

She looked up at him and shook her head.

“Don’t think I could if I tried,” she said, then tapped the grass, motioned for him to sit down. “It’s pretty here, at least.”

“Yeah, it is,” he said, then sat down. 

The grass felt damp; he didn’t understand why she would willingly sit on wet grass when she complained about getting the cuffs of her jeans damp in the winter. 

“This place doesn’t feel right,” she said, rolling up the cuffs of her sweater. The day was warming up. “I can feel that something bad happened here.”

He nodded. Though he didn’t know much about instinct and how it shaped human psychology, he figured everyone had a sense for this kind of tragedy. Back in the day, he’d done renovations on a plantation house and had come home each day with aching joints, an awful headache. He would never understand why someone would want to rebuild that place, let alone live in it.

“You’ve handled all of this really well,” he said. “I don’t know how you do it.”

She laughed humorlessly. Now, they could see the snow left on the mountains, the sun brightening the horizon. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

“I made my peace with senseless violence a long time ago,” she said. “Infected will try to kill you. It’s their biological imperative, and I can’t judge them for that. And Emma had started to twitch before I shot her; we both knew her time was up. It’s the people, the lucid ones, who really scare me.”

But she’d been surrounded on all sides by the horde. She’d been taken into their circle, acting as a centerpiece. If they chose to devour her, they wouldn’t hold back. Why hadn’t that upset her? After Teton Village, after the houses at the ski resort, how was she comfortable with killing again? The infected in the cabins here, she’d shot them without a second thought, but a clicker who had once been a child had terrified her. And Emma, she’d been lucid enough, and Tess had braided the woman’s hair, then put a shot through her skull, then decorated her grave. What was the difference? How could Tess tell those situations apart? What had helped her move on?

“If we take stuff from here,” she asked, “would that be considered stealing?”

He furrowed his brow, sharp change in conversation.

“You want to take someone else’s socks this time?”

Biting her lip, debating for a moment, she picked up something that had been clipped onto the waistband of her pants. She held it out for him as if she were a priest offering him the sacrament, and he smiled.

“Where’d you find that?” he asked. “Haven’t seen one of those in years.”

“Someone’s nightstand,” she said, dangling the second-generation iPod Shuffle in front of him. The blue aluminum of the device looked out-of-place in this world, as if Tess had found a piece of alien technology. She even had a pair of plain white earbuds, the kind that had come in iPod packages back then. “Complete with a charger and everything.”

“Anything good on there?” he asked.

“Not anything you would like.”

“So nothing good, then.”

“Yeah, Texas,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Exactly.”

“Let’s give it a listen.”

She handed him one of the earbuds, then took another for herself, slouched back against the fence. Without a screen on the device, she couldn’t see which song was on, so she scanned through the music, the first few seconds of each song playing. As she’d expected, he didn’t know any of these songs, but she came to one song he'd heard before and let it play. He smiled; this song had been on the radio long ago, something that sounded like it was from another decade, _it’s empty in the valley of your heart, the sun it rises slowly as you walk away from all the fears and all the faults you’ve left behind._

Was this stealing? He didn’t know the answer. Should anyone return, they ought to still have their things, but then again, Joel, Tess, and Tommy wouldn’t take anything important. And a handmade quilt was better put on a bed someone slept in. If the sweaters felt cursed, then at least Maria knew how to unravel the garments, had made Joel a hat out of a moth-eaten fisherman sweater last year. He didn’t know if he should be thoughtful or thoughtless. There was an inherent selfishness to survival, and in the last two decades, he’d lost his method for measuring what was and wasn’t necessary. Did Tess need someone’s old iPod in order to survive? No, of course not, but why leave the thing behind? He liked the banjos in this song. With the sun-capped mountains in front of them, the long grasses in this field, he felt that this moment had been made for them, specifically crafted by God above so that they could hear this song together and watch as the sun rose over a cursed place. Though maybe she should’ve left the iPod behind, he wondered what good leaving it behind would have done.

Maybe he could teach Ellie the guitar part of this song. They had the charger, right? So all they would need to do was plug the thing into their wall sockets, and then, he could listen to the song over and over again, write down the chords. The guitar part was simple enough. Maybe he could memorize the lyrics too. Someone in town had a banjo; maybe he could learn that part from them. Oh, he missed music. He missed listening to an MP3 player while he did scutwork. He missed how Sarah would plug her MP3 player into the auxiliary jack in his truck, then play songs he didn’t like. He wished he could share some of this with Ellie. He wished she knew what an iPod was. Or maybe, when they got home, he could show this old iPod to her, tell her that it had been outdated by the time the outbreak had occurred, and that you plugged it into your computer in order to put on music. Then, you could keep multiple albums in your pocket. How cool was that? Instead of having to keep all of her tapes on a shelf, she could carry around one little iPod.

He wished she would let him teach her again. He wished...he wished for a lot of things. He missed her. How could he miss someone who lived in his backyard? But he missed her, missed when she would tell him about comics, missed how she laughed when she finally played the right chord. Though he knew she was getting older, knew enough about teenagers to understand her coming-of-age, he couldn't figure out why they’d grown apart, for things had been so easy for a while. Back then, Ellie would come by for dinner, and Tess would send the girl home with leftovers and a hug, the lights coming on in the garage a few minutes later. They all laughed together. They talked about how Ellie thought the sheep were weird in a fun way, and they talked about how plants grew, and they talked about the structural soundness of wooden boards, which both Tess and Ellie found boring but listened to anyway. And her birthday, he took Ellie to the museum on her birthday, and they’d been so happy together. For once, she’d gotten to be a kid. Though Tess insisted that Ellie was still having her chance to _be a kid_ in Jackson, Joel saw something different, saw the prospect of tattoos and feeling grown up enough to be on group patrols, saw reckless decisions and pulling away from the people who cared about her. Was it selfish to want to see Ellie happy again? But did he really know what her happiness looked like?

“I think she knows,” he said, and Tess paused the song.

“Who knows?” Tess asked, though he figured she already understood.

“Ellie,” he said. The sky was the color of a robin’s egg. “I think she knows.”

Tess took a deep breath, said, “Okay.”

“It’s not okay,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

“What makes you think she knows?”

“She’s different with me,” he gave. “Something’s changed.”

“She’s sixteen, Joel. People change. _Teenagers_ change.”

“But it’s bigger than that,” he insisted. “She won’t talk to me anymore. It’s like I’m only ever in her way.”

“If she actually knew,” Tess said, meeting his gaze, “don’t you think she would ask us about it?”

Well, yeah, he did, but what else would make Ellie pull away from him? What else could he have done to make her leave?

“I don’t know what to do if she asks,” he said, the vulnerability making him feel as if he were driving a knife into his own leg on purpose. “I don’t know what to say.”

“We can tell her the truth.”

“We?”

Tess huffed, said, “I’m not gonna get out of this scot-free.”

“It was never your decision,” he said. “I don’t know how things would be different, had you been there.”

Tess sighed, closed her eyes, _I’ve told you this a hundred times,_ “Had I been there, nothing would be different.”

“But you weren’t there, Tess,” he insisted. “She won’t blame you.”

She laughed humorlessly, shook her head.

“She’ll blame me,” Tess said, “because we both lied to her. And she’ll think I lied even though there weren’t stakes for me. She’ll think I stood by you, not her.”

He sighed. He didn’t want there to be two sides. If they needed to see things in shades of grey, then, well, fine, but he refused to have there be two sides. He wouldn’t pit himself against Ellie, and he hated the idea that Ellie could pit herself against Tess. Still, he couldn’t deny that Tess had stood by him, if only in quiet ways. 

“I don’t want to tell her the truth,” he said. 

“Then we won’t tell her the truth,” Tess gave, as if it could be that simple.

“I can wait until she’s older,” he said, nodding, trying to confirm that for himself. “Then, she might understand.”

Tess nodded in agreement, said, “She might.”

With daylight overhead, he knew that Tommy would wake up soon, want to get an early start on the ride home, but Joel didn’t want to go home, not yet. It was easier to be afraid in a cursed place. Here, his fears felt warranted. Back in Jackson, he knew he wouldn’t be able to bring up Salt Lake City again.

“I don’t want to lose her,” he said, looking down at his lap. 

He could feel Tess staring at him, wished he could ask her to look away. Though he knew the script for this kind of interaction - consoling nods, a shoulder touch, practiced gestures he’d gone through plenty of times with her - he didn’t want her to touch him, or to acknowledge him in any way. Really, he wanted her to forget that this conversation had happened, but he knew that he would never be so lucky.

“There’s nothing we can do,” she said, resigned. “Whatever she learns, whatever she knows, we can’t change any of it, Joel. We need to let it go.”

Of course, she could let this go so easily. She hadn’t been in that hospital, hadn’t killed her way through its halls, hadn’t driven back to Jackson fearing that someone left alive would follow him and just shoot the two of them then. He stood by his decision, of course he stood by it, but consequences loomed on the horizon, and he didn’t think she understood that. She didn’t know how it felt to live with a violent past.

“Want to listen to something else?” she said, sounding tired of the conversation. No, they weren’t going to change their minds on this subject, so they might as well stop talking about it. 

“Sure,” he said, and she scrolled through more songs, the button-pressing hypnotic. He leaned back against the fence, looked out at the horizon. At least this place was beautiful. Cursed, wretched, but beautiful. If he needed to stay in one place for the rest of his life, this one was a good one, surrounded by mountains, four seasons, full of people who cared. The next best place, he figured, would be by the sea, maybe Maine, maybe Cape Cod, somewhere that was only hot in summer but still close to the water. When had he last seen the ocean? Boston, of course it had been Boston, but the ocean there had been different, no beautiful beaches. The ocean there had been its own kind of curse. At least the mountains here were a blessing.

She put on something with simple guitar in the background, and the singer sounded a little whiny, like Dylan but with a higher voice. Something different, sure, but he could get on board. Exhaling, he relaxed against the fence, then tried to put Salt Lake City out of his mind.

_Our mother has been absent ever since we founded Rome, but there’s gonna be a party when the wolf comes home._

* * *

They left notes in case any survivors returned to the settlement. Tess kept the iPod, clipped it to her jeans while they rode back to Jackson, the cord of the headphones crossing over his chest so that they could have an earbud each. In the end, Tess had been right; he didn’t know any of this music, didn’t like most of it either, but at least they had something to listen to on the ride home. 

Birch bark peeled from the trees, leaves falling around them. With clouds in the sky, the day was half-dark, and Tess reined deftly as they made their way through the forests. He loved the smell of pine. As he held onto her, he felt the scratchy wool of her sweater, the sensation almost overwhelming, a warm body beneath something abrasive, and so many colors around them, a cutting coldness to the breeze, the world tired and ready to hibernate for the winter. When they reached a clearing, they stopped for a makeshift lunch, apples and jerky, then had a contest to see who could throw their core farthest, and though Tommy won, Tess was a close second, and Joel ended up hitting a tree by accident, his left twenty feet from the rest. Getting back on the horses, Tess asked if he wanted to rein instead, and he said no, then asked if they could listen to the Chili Peppers song again. 

After leading the horses into the barn, briefing Maria, Joel and Tess headed home, no work for today, the afternoon in full swing, people heading home for dinner. She kept the iPod tucked in her pocket as if it were contraband. Even when they were in their own bedroom, undressing and unpacking, she still put the thing in the drawer of her bedside-table, out of sight. Back in the day, those could hold exactly 100 songs, a feat when they first came out and then a laughingstock as the years went on, but, wow, 100 songs! And they hadn’t even made it through all of the songs yet, for he’d forced her to skip the rap songs, then listen twice to the ones he recognized. Or, rather, he would take his hands off of her hips while they rode home, then press the skip button on the iPod clipped to her pants, and if she opposed, she would go back to the previous song and say _stop that._ Sometimes, he would ask what the name of a song was, and sometimes, she knew, but he liked best when neither of them knew the name, for then they could share something new. In a world where nothing was new, he liked experiencing a song for the first time with her.

They showered together, not wanting to smell like horses anymore. At least now there wasn’t blood in her hair. 

“We should ask her over for dinner tonight,” Tess said as he washed her hair. “Dough in the freezer, all those tomatoes. No one says no to pizza.”

“Is the cheese still fresh?”

“Should be.”

“I’m not sure she’ll take the invitation.”

“We’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it.”

They needed to wash the towels. They needed to do their laundry, and clean the kitchen too. In the blur of late-summer preservation, tomatoes boiling on the stove for hours, the canning jars lined up for a hot water bath, they’d neglected the house, and he tried to make a mental list of tasks, everything that would make their lives better now. They were home, and they didn’t need to be anywhere other than home. 

After the shower, Joel took the dough out of the freezer, found a jar of tomatoes, clipped oregano and basil from Tess’s windowsill herb garden, He watched through the window as Tess headed over to Ellie’s garage, knocked on the door and then rubbed her hands together in the cold. And though Ellie answered the door, through the window he could see that the girl was tired, not in the mood, and Tess shoved her hands in her pockets, equally uncomfortable. 

The kitchen window was open, thank goodness. He could hear everything.

“Hey,” Tess said, then pointed back toward the house. “We’re making pizza for dinner. Care to join?”

Ellie shook her head, looking annoyed, said, “I’m really busy right now, Tess.”

“With what?” Tess asked, and maybe that was the wrong question, Ellie sighing with half-defeat. No, she wasn’t busy with anything in particular; she just didn’t want to have dinner with Tess and Joel.

“Just...stuff,” Ellie said, then started to shut her door, but Tess wedged herself between them, not letting the girl out of the conversation that easily.

“If you don’t want to see us, and that’s it, no other reason,” Tess said, “then I’d prefer if you’d say it outright. None of this _too busy_ bullshit. You don’t need to protect our feelings, and you really don’t need to lie.”

For a moment, Ellie was silent, but then, she nodded, shrugged tiredly, clicked off her lights. Though she clearly didn’t want to have dinner with them, she didn’t want to explain why either. And maybe she would warm up, and whatever had made her pull away would suddenly disappear. And they would all be okay.

He preheated the oven and hoped for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i've also made a playlist of all the songs on tess's (stolen, depending on how you look at it) ipod](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA5tKk8qL2mgZjf-bK9jClygxjzKcNPdD)


	15. The Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> angst warning

All of the coughing had made her lower back sore. In bed, he rubbed that spot, blankets pulled up high over their bodies, flannel sheets in winter. Though the onset of the fever had shaken her, had brought back fragments of memories of her first days in Jackson, she hated even more these days toward the end of the illness, her fever gone but the aching joints and coughing fits remaining. She wished she would get better already.

Who even got the flu in March? Only she would, given how many times she’d had it as a child, and when she woke with a fever almost a week ago, she'd winced, prayed for a cold, just a little, stupid cold that would keep her out of work for two or three days, but no, of course she had the flu. Joel had made her soup a few nights beforehand, had put cold cloths on her forehead, but there was no escaping the aches and pains, how stuffed up she felt. No, she needed to wait this out, and hope it wouldn’t get any worse. At least it hadn’t gotten any worse so far.

“How’ve you been sleeping?” Joel asked, gently rubbing her back.

“Not great,” she gave.

Though the soft touches were nice, she wished he would be quiet and go back to his side of the bed and let them both sleep. But still, she liked feeling cared for. The flu may not have surprised her, but the way Joel had handled it had.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he said, as if he were some expert, as if he’d cared for her countless times. She assumed he’d forgotten the norovirus weekend in the QZ, and though her memories of that awful weekend were practically technicolor, she was glad at least one of them had been spared.

Turning over to face him, she told him no, she really just needed some rest, and he nodded, then went to kiss her goodnight. But no, she might still be contagious - though maybe that logic wasn’t sound - so she pressed a finger to his lips, not tonight. He kissed her forehead anyway.

In that hallway kind of silence, the moments between when they said goodnight and when they each fell asleep, she felt as if she could tell him things, as if the darkness and their shared transitory period made vulnerability irrelevant. And though she struggled with her words, she wanted to tell him so many things. All week, he’d made sure she was okay while simultaneously working construction, and he made her soup for dinner, chicken soup, the kind people make for sick loved ones. She thought she owed him a certain kind of thanks, but she didn’t want to give him that thanks, for he ought to already know. Still, she wanted to say it anyway, and she could say it so simply. If she told him she loved him, she wouldn’t be lying, but she didn’t want to tell him for reasons she refused to explore. No, he knew already, so she should just let it all be. And this silence was meant for helping them sleep, not for divulging their greatest secrets. She would be rude to interrupt.

But she thought about what she would say, as if her thinking would gradually trickle into his head. She thought and thought until her mind went comfortably blank, and before she fell asleep, she made the same promise she made every night, one she broke every morning: tomorrow, she would figure out how to tell him. 

* * *

There was knocking at the front door. Tess really didn’t want to get up. She tried to kick Joel, make him get the door, but his space in their bed was empty. Furrowing her brow, she looked over, and Joel wasn’t there, his side of the bed still made. Had he slept at Tommy’s last night? Or maybe he was on the couch, coming in late and not wanting to wake her. But if he was on the couch, then why wasn’t he getting the door? Her nose was so stuffed that getting out of bed felt like a challenge. How could someone get the flu at the end of March? But she’d had the flu so many times as a kid, so she knew she was more than capable, and - oh, she really wanted this knocking to _stop._

Opening the front door, she saw Maria, and as Maria went to head in, Tess held up a hand, shook her head.

“I don’t think I’m contagious anymore,” Tess said, “but I’m still not in the mood.”

Maria gave a tight-lipped smile, then asked, “May I come in?”

“Is Joel out on patrols?”

“Let me come in.”

Suddenly, Tess recognized the way Maria was speaking, no explanations until everyone had sat down and prepared themselves. Tess had been on the giving end of this conversation more than once.

“He’s dead,” Tess said, trying to read the emotions on Maria’s face, but Maria could be so calculated, so cold in the face of great tragedy. Only Maria could break this kind of news properly, and Maria would break this news with a stone-cold face, any greater emotion only making the experience worse. “Did you find the body?”

“No, he’s not dead,” Maria said, then nudged her way through the door, nodded toward the living room. “Come on. I don’t have all day.”

Tess’s mind jumped from one conclusion to another. If Joel wasn’t dead, then Ellie was, or maybe Cat was dead, and Joel had gone to figure out why, and now, Tess would need to be the one to break that news to Ellie. No, Maria wouldn’t have come to tell Tess if Cat was dead, and where was Joel? Why wasn’t Maria telling her where Joel was? Even if Joel wasn’t dead, he was somewhere, and she knew that that _somewhere_ couldn’t possibly be good.

Maria sat down on the couch, then motioned for Tess to join her. Reluctantly, Tess sat down, and Maria folded her hands on her lap as if this were a normal get-together, just two people chatting.

“Last night,” Maria said, her words measured, her tone even, no emotional stakes, “Ellie snuck out with one of the horses, and she left you both a note about where she was going. When Joel found the note, he went after her, and now, we’re waiting for the two of them to return.

In an instant, Tess understood where the two had gone, why Ellie had left, but she asked anyway, “Where did they go?”

“Salt Lake City,” Maria gave, and Tess looked down and nodded, of course that was where. She’d been waiting for a moment like this, a moment of undeniable recognition. And why hadn’t Joel woken her? Why had he gone alone? “We have to operate under the assumption that she knows.”

“Yeah, of course we do,” Tess said, shaking her head. “She’s known all along.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Yeah, but you don’t know her that well,” Tess gave, and when she looked at Maria, she was surprised to find the other woman looking cross. 

“Well,” Maria said, holding her palms up in defeat, “now you know. I have things to do.”

Maria stood and headed for the door, always the diplomat, and though Tess wanted to ask more questions, wanted to hold Maria back, she didn’t know what to say, so Maria left the house, the door clicking shut, and all at once, Tess felt alone. Joel was somewhere in Utah, Ellie too, and Tess had been left all alone, half-sick and exhausted, nose stuffed up, the melted snow turning the walkways in town to mud. She hadn’t been to the gardens in a week, this fucking flu, and though she figured she wasn’t contagious anymore, the walk to the greenhouses still seemed endless, as if that were her own trip from here to Salt Lake City. When would Joel return? Standing, she went into the kitchen; the fridge looked the same as always, nothing left out on the counters, so he hadn’t taken provisions. Had Maria not come by to tell her so, she would’ve assumed that Joel had gone out for patrols, then headed to repair a leak in a neighbor’s sink. And he would come home like he had a week ago, shit-eating grin, he had a frozen whole chicken in his arms. He wanted to make her soup, sick thing. Oh, and he picked up vegetables, he had celery she’d grown and carrots her friends had pulled from the dirt, and while she half-slept on the couch, he scrubbed the vegetables in the sink, then sizzled them in butter. He’d even gotten her noodles. And he served them both soup in the big bowls they rarely used, then had the audacity to apologize for not being able to bring her bread.

Though she knew very little about marriages, she’d thought of that _in sickness_ part a lot since she started running a fever a week ago. His palm on her forehead, _yeah, you’re warm,_ and he went early to his route so that he could tell the other patrols that Tess wouldn’t be showing up that day. And while he shot two clickers in the western areas, she lay in bed, curled up, joints aching, sweat on her forehead, and when he came home early - he even came home early for her, damn him - he put a cool, damp cloth on her head, gently rubbed her back. She wasn’t hungry, so he didn’t force her to eat, but he brought her a glass of water, then nudged her, told her to drink. Against her better judgment, she asked him if he would pull her hair back, just a ponytail, whatever he could manage, and he surprised her with two French braids, elastics coming from a drawer she’d assumed he hadn’t known about. Yes, he’d had a daughter, and he’d told her years ago about braiding tutorials on YouTube, his saving grace. He’d been dreadful about the period talk, but he sure as hell had known how to braid.

The last time she was sick, she’d expected to die. And she’d been all alone in the infirmary, the fever her only company, and she dreamt of something else, anything else. Her mind played tricks so that she wouldn’t feel so afraid, but those tricks only made her fears grow bigger. But now, he tucked her in, and he kissed her cheek before he left for the day, telling her that he would bring home ice cream for her throat, making sure she knew how the VCR worked in case she got bored. This time, she wouldn’t die - at least, she didn’t think she would die - and he was there to take care of her. And he _wanted_ to take care of her, smiling like a champ while he made her chicken noodle soup, going to bed early with her, cuddling her, making her warm up to that word. She knew him well enough to not expect care, but he cared for her. He cared for her all week. That was something.

But now, the house was dark. He’d left without her. And she’d overslept, she’d been sick for a while now, she wouldn’t join him on patrols anyway. But why hadn’t he woken her up? Why hadn’t he left a note? And why had Maria come around, waking Tess up and explaining the news? She watched the decisions of others as if she were on the street looking in through a house’s window, and then, the people she stared at shut their curtains.

The house was empty. She was starting to get hungry. Though the fever had quelled, her knees still ached, and her nose still felt stuffy. In the pantry, they had the very last of a loaf of bread. If she wanted to, she could make herself toast.

Outside, the sun was up, the day uncharacteristically warm for March. She stood in the kitchen and ate toast, not caring as crumbs fell onto the floor.

* * *

When she woke again, she heard thunder, and she squinted toward the windows, watched as a torrential downpour fell over the town. What time was it? After Maria left, after breakfast, Tess must’ve fallen asleep on the couch, walking down the stairs leaving her exhausted, but how long had she slept? Had Joel returned? On overcast days, she could never tell the time. Standing up, heading over to where they left their bags by the door, she saw hers sitting alone, so, no, he wasn’t home. Oh, her throat felt so dry. She hated waking up at midday, feeling feverish and disoriented, more exhausted than she’d been before she napped. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she went into the kitchen to get a glass of water, and when she took a sip, she saw through the window that Ellie’s lights were on. The girl had always been so good at turning everything off before she left, and she’d left in the small hours of the morning too, so she must be home now. Though Tess knew better than to go out and talk to the girl - in truth, Tess hadn’t been sure Ellie would return - she wished she could ask the girl if Joel had come back. But if Joel had come back, why wasn’t he at home? 

She could ask Maria. Of course Maria would know. Tess's raincoat was still by the door, and she almost put it on before she remembered she was still wearing her pajamas. No, change first, that was a good idea. And then, walk all the way to Maria’s in a torrential downpour. Yeah, great. That sounded great.

By the time she reached Maria’s, Tess had soaked through her jeans, her forehead wet because the hood of her raincoat didn’t cover much. As always, the front door was unlocked, so she pulled it open, sighed once she got inside, finally out of the rain. Joel’s jacket hung on a hook by the door, so he was here, definitely here, and maybe he’d gone home, found her asleep, and come here instead. But no, that didn’t make sense, Maria and Tommy lived closer to the gate, and why would he walk pointlessly through the rain? She hung her coat alongside his, unlaced her boots, then headed into the living room, somewhere warmer, somewhere dry.

While Maria and Tommy sat on the couch, Joel stood by one of the windows in the living room, right above the low bookshelf holding the Moomin comics Ellie liked, a Swedish-to-English dictionary, the whole _Twilight_ series with breaks in their backs. Rain hit the window constantly, blustering winds, a real downpour, and Joel hovered alongside the sill, halfway turned toward her, halfway turned away. His clothes were dry; he had returned a while ago. And why was he looking out the window? From this angle, he couldn’t see anything of interest, but he looked anyway. 

“Hey,” she said, and he glanced back at her, not surprised that someone was there but more indifferent to her presence. Yes, hello, the normal pleasantries. He wanted to move on through those normal pleasantries. “When did you get back?”

Only when her arms were around him did she realize what she had done, reaching out for him, holding him, missing him, and she blushed against the fabric of his shirt, ducked her head. Maria and Tommy could see them. What was she doing? But this was Joel, and Joel always held her after something painful happened, but this time, his hands hovered over her back, the north ends of magnets never quite able to meet. Eventually, he brought his palms to her back, but the hesitation made her heart pound. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

He pulled away from her as if shrugging out of wet clothes, then said, “We should head home.”

She furrowed her brow. Why head home now? When she looked to Tommy and Maria, she saw them staring at each other, unspoken words passing between them, a kind of understanding that Tess didn’t understand. Something had happened, but no one wanted to tell her what. She could infer most of it - Salt Lake City, and Joel couldn’t lie anymore - but she needed specifics. She wished she’d been there. She wished he’d asked her first, or left her a note. And as she looked at him, tried to read his hardened expression, she realized that she’d subconsciously assumed she wouldn’t see him alive again, and that her last memories with him would be those from the night beforehand, going to bed together, her back aching from the coughing fits, the flu not done with her just yet. And then, an empty bed in the morning, and Maria knocking on the door, and when Joel was gone but Maria wasn’t, that was always a sign of bad news. She’d assumed Joel was dead, and though Maria had told her otherwise, she’d only internalized the truth when she saw him standing by the window, shadows cast on his face, his expression unreadable. For a moment, she wondered if maybe he was dead, and that this was just a ghost put in his place. Maybe the infection had, in fact, taken over her mind. Maybe she would look in the mirror later and find flowers growing from the mark on her neck, and she would realize that none of this was real.

But he’d said something. What had he said? They should go home, yes, they should go home, but no, they shouldn’t. It was pouring out, didn’t he see that?

She shook her head, said, “We ought to wait out the storm.”

The muscles in his face tensed, as if he were wincing, but she looked him up and down, and she didn’t think he was in pain. 

“We need to head home,” he said, then moved past her, headed for the door while Tommy and Maria sat silently on the couch, their expressions judgmental in a way Tess couldn’t read. Though something was wrong, no one wanted to tell her what that thing was, and on any other day, she would demand that they tell her, would snark them and prod them until they told her what had happened, but she heard Joel putting on his boots by the door, picking up his pack. She thought that letting him leave without her would mean never seeing him again. And her jeans were already soaked; she couldn’t become any more damp than she already was, so she left Maria and Tommy in the living room, then followed Joel out of the house.

They were alone in the streets of Jackson. Everyone else had taken cover. And she figured he hadn’t eaten anything today, but their fridge was empty, some leftovers and little else. The best they could find at home would be some old vegetables and the potatoes she’d meant to roast before she got sick. Did they have meat in the freezer? Though they had plenty of dried beans in the pantry, she thought of standing at the stove, wooden spoon scraping the bottom of the pot, trying to get the beans to soften despite not soaking them first, and she grimaced. Even if she didn’t still feel sick, she wouldn’t want to take the time to cook beans. 

Should they drop by the bar? A sandwich would be nice, but no, Joel seemed intent on heading home, leading her by a few paces, the hood of her coat up while he let his hair soak instead. She wondered what Maria and Tommy had been thinking, then wondered why Joel hadn’t come straight home in the first place. She wondered if he would think her tacky for spreading out the old eggplant, zucchini, and fennel she had, along with chopped potatoes, and putting that tray into the oven, then waiting until it all seemed done. Oh, she was starting to get hungry. Though she wanted to think more about what must be on his mind, she was really starting to get hungry.

“I can make you something,” she said as they walked up the porch-steps, her hood coming off as she reached the front door, “if you’re hungry.”

He opened the front door, didn’t respond as he motioned for her to head inside. Reluctantly, she went in, then pulled off her coat, wet jeans clinging to her skin. She hated the feeling of wet clothes, longed for an opportunity to change. If she didn’t plan on leaving the house for the rest of the day, then she could put her pajamas back on, right? The thought of doing laundry made her already aching back hurt more.

“I’m not hungry,” he said, hanging his coat on a hook in the entryway, running a hand through his hair. He left his pack on the ground; on any other day, she would’ve scolded him, _that’ll leave a water stain,_ but today, she let it go. “I’m going to take a shower.”

From his tone, she knew he wasn’t looking for company, so she nodded as he took off his boots, then let him head upstairs on his own. She wanted to give him a head-start, five minutes for himself before she went into the bedroom, found dry clothes. But in the meantime, she shivered with chills, left her wet boots in a heap by the front door, went into the kitchen to see what she could salvage for a late lunch. If she cut off a browning edge of the fennel, then she could still eat the rest, and the potatoes were small enough that she could cut them up in seconds. She hated preheating the oven. She wanted a snack of some kind, but as she put together chopped fennel, the potatoes, carrots she couldn’t remember harvesting, squash she managed to find in the freezer, she knew she wouldn’t be able to find anything until their haphazard lunch was done in the oven. Pickles, they had pickles, she could eat their pickles in the meantime, and she took the jar out of the fridge, Maria’s old recipe, loads and loads of dill. Dipping a fork into the jar, she didn’t bother with a plate, for she didn’t feel like doing dishes. Had Joel been in the kitchen with her, he would’ve made fun of her, but then again, had Joel been in the kitchen with her, and had today been any other day, she would’ve told him that they were out of food, could he head into town to pick something up? Milk, eggs, bread, the usual. Tomorrow, she could get more produce from the gardens, but, really, they just need short-term stuff now. She doesn’t want to have ketchup soup for dinner, alright?

After she put the baking dish in the oven, she turned the kitchen timer, then took the thing with her upstairs, leaving the ticking timer on her bedside table as she went in search of dry clothes. She could hear the shower running, could see light beneath the closed bathroom door. Against her better judgment, she wanted to join him. At first, he’d joked that they were saving water, but after a while, it became quotidian, two bodies in a shared space. Sometimes, after long, hard days, he would draw them a bath to share, his soaped fingers trailing from her ankle to calf, knee to inner thigh, and her tired muscles would relax from the warmth, his relaxing from how she massaged his shoulders. And she could tell that he hated how she’d started letting Maria cut her hair, for he would run his fingers through her wet hair, then furrow his brow, say that this trim looked uneven, and when she rolled her eyes at him, he would feign innocence, claim he was just trying to help her out.

Dry clothes. Yes, dry clothes. She wanted her pajamas back, and a sweatshirt too, for good measure. Around her, the house had gone cold, so maybe she ought to put wood in the fireplace. Really, what she wanted to do was sit down. Her back still ached, both from the flu itself and from the coughing, and if she got into bed right now, she surely would fall asleep, and she was _hungry,_ but there was hardly any food left in the house. Her flannel pajamas, a pair of her wool socks, her sweatshirt looted from the University of Wyoming. Why couldn’t she get warm? Outside, the rain continued to fall, the temperature dropping. She hated freezing rain. In North Carolina, she’d never once seen freezing rain, or at least no rain that had resembled this kind of rain, too warm to be snow but far too cold to be rain. She wished the weather would make up its mind, either spring or winter, none of this in-between. She wanted to lie down. 

She heard the shower turn off. She’d taken too much time. Their bed was still unmade from last night; she sat down on his side, pressed her palms against her thighs. She didn’t want to talk to him. No, that gave him too much credit; she didn’t want to be stuck in a standoff with him, his expression unreadable, everyone in the room but her knowing something that they refused to tell her about. No, she wanted to go back to last night. She wanted to be in bed next to him, and he was asking her what she needed, and she swore that he would bring her anything, even something impossible, even something far beyond his reach. He made her soup. Why had he bothered making her soup? She missed the way he’d tucked her in last week, gentle hands and warm blankets, and he told her that he would be back soon, there was food in the fridge, he’d left a glass of water on her nightstand should she want it. Back then, thinking and understanding had taken too much effort, so as he loomed in their bedroom doorway, she watched his mouth move and filled in certain words. Her cheeks grew warm; no, she shouldn’t think of that right now. Ellie knew. Ellie knew, and Tess knew what that knowing meant. Now, everything would change, the ending a whimper instead of a bang, life altered in an instant, sun one moment and rain the next. She wanted to go home, but she was at home already. 

The bathroom door opened. Though he noticed her sitting on the bed, he didn’t bother with modesty, left his towel on the bedroom floor as he went into the closet, looked for fresh clothes. Jeans, one of the shirts she liked to take, soft, worn-in flannel. She missed him even though he stood only a few feet away. On her bedside table, the kitchen timer ticked on, and once he was dressed, he came over and sat down alongside her, his palm coming to the small of her back, touching her this time. Why was he touching her? When she looked at him, she saw that same soft warmth in his eyes, asking her if she needed anything before bed, making a whole pot of soup for her. He wanted to comfort her. He thought she needed to be comforted.

And maybe she wanted to be comforted. She reached out for him, and when his big, warm arms came around her, she stopped thinking about the rain. She stopped thinking about Ellie, all alone in their garage, angry with them, maybe never forgiving them. And Joel knew that Ellie was gone. He wouldn’t talk about any of it, but he knew, and she knew that Ellie could tear him apart. She knew that Ellie was his blind spot, his weakest point, the person who would surely get him killed, and she knew he liked living that way. And she lived that way too, though she couldn’t compare herself to him. To her, Ellie was a projection of her younger self, and this time, she could guide the scared, naive, lonely girl she’d once been, could offer the advice she’d sought out years ago. And what would her younger self have done, had someone like Joel made such a monumental decision on her behalf? _She would’ve killed him,_ she thought, and she shut her eyes tight, not wanting to imagine that life.

“It’s okay,” he said, rubbing her back gently.

He felt so warm against her body, and she wanted to stay like this. Fuck the kitchen timer, the storm outside, her traitorous stomach. She wanted to crawl beneath the covers with him, then stay there for the rest of the day, the outside world a sick joke, the boundaries of their lives being her side of the bed and his. She didn’t want to think about betrayal, or about immunity, or about what she would have done, given the same circumstances. No, she wanted her mind to go blank as he held her, as he stroked her hair and held her close, as he promised her that everything would be okay.

“I love you, Joel,” she said, her tone a whisper against the shoulder of his shirt, muffled sounds that made her cheeks grow hot, her body tense. She shouldn't have said that. Why had she said that? She shouldn't have said that. 

For a moment, she thought he hadn’t heard, thank goodness, but then, his arms slackened around her, letting her go. No, this wasn’t what was supposed to happen. What was he doing? He was standing, and when she stared up at him, she felt naked, bare to him, her face childish and afraid, the vulnerability making her nauseous. And he looked down at her with confusion. He hadn’t wanted her to say that.

“You have something in the oven, right?” he said, then walked over to her bedside table, picked up the kitchen timer.

Though she could tell that he was pretending not to have heard her, he had never been a good actor, and part of her wondered if he acted poorly on purpose, if he wanted her to know that those words weren’t spoken in this house, and she would be remiss to repeat them.

“Yeah, I do,” she said, her throat feeling tight, as if she were about to vomit.

“I’ll take care of that,” he said, picking up the timer, his face turning cold again. 

Then, he left the bedroom, his towel from the shower still sitting on the bedroom floor. She dug her nails into her thighs. 

Stupid girl. What had she become? When she first met Ellie, she’d seen herself in the girl, but still, her younger self had been different. Far more violent. At least Ellie knew how to be civil, even apologizing before she stabbed soldiers. But Tess had never been civil. Those first few years of the outbreak, she’d been angry, for she’d been too lost and afraid to feel anything else. And this place, this fucking settlement, it had made her go soft. A wedding? She was an idiot. Why had she agreed to that? Or, really, why had she been the one to bring it up? She had known Joel for a long time, had watched his brother leave him, had witnessed his many kills over the years, and she’d always kept doubt in her back pocket, for if he could slash the throat of one of Robert’s guys, then surely he could slash her throat too. And they were strictly business because anything other than business got you killed or sick or put on _wanted_ signs. Back then, she never fucked him out of love. Sometimes, they even had sex precisely because they were angry, sometimes with the Zone, sometimes with each other. Back then, anger had felt so sweet, dripping honey on her fingers, flowers in spring, water in a desert. They shared an apartment and pretended that was an inconvenience, then complained about the mice in order to keep themselves sane. And this house, this big house in Wyoming, she’d stepped into it on their second day together in Jackson and thought _this will never work._ Marble countertops. Who had marble countertops? And she did her best to act like she wanted this life, for he seemed to want it, and they were bound by...history, and that was all. They were bound by their work in a Zone they’d left long ago. What was left, now that they were different people? She’d thought there could be more, and they’d both been such good performers, but the act needed to end at some point.

But she hadn’t expected to be a fool in the end. No, she’d thought they were changing for the better, but really, nothing had changed. Downstairs, the timer went off, and she heard him open the oven, take out her sheet of lunch. Though she still felt hungry, she didn’t want to join him down there. Instead, she wanted to lie down and piece together their days in Jackson. She wanted to review each day, look for the details she’d missed. She wanted to pull away the facade and see what had been genuine, and what they’d both pretended to feel so that they wouldn’t have to ask themselves deeper questions. She wanted to know the truth.

He called to her, _lunch’s ready._ Taking a deep breath, she forced herself up, then tried not to think.

* * *

When their alarm sounded the next morning, Tess turned it off before its second beep, her eyes wide open, sleep feeling far away. Yes, she was awake. There was no need to rub it in.

Alongside her in bed, Joel sighed, turned onto his other side, not ready to get up just yet. Because the gardens didn’t expect to have her back for another few days, she could stay in bed for a while, but he had a route to patrol. He needed to get up, and she didn’t, so she might as well pretend she’d fallen back to sleep. All night, he’d tossed and turned, keeping her up in the process, and now that only aftershocks of her flu remained, she felt exhausted enough to be annoyed but not exhausted enough to fall asleep despite the movement and noise. Neither of them had gotten a wink of sleep, so if she didn’t get up when he did, if she waited until she heard the front door click shut as he left for the day, he would understand.

Finally, he got up, even had the decency to walk quietly to the closet, find clothes for the day. The sun wasn’t making her squint in bed, so the day must have been overcast. He would need something warm, especially this early in the morning. What would he put on? The leather jacket she liked, yes, he wore that a lot in the colder months, and the scarf she’d knitted for him once, then unraveled, then knitted again as her Christmas present to him this past year, the big holes finally gone, the thing looking more like a scarf than a bunch of cobwebs stacked on top of each other. And he’d carved a bookmark for her, one with a wolf howling at mountains and a full moon set onto the front, and he kept saying he lost track of time, he could make her something better, he’d learned certain techniques but didn’t know very much about this, but she loved that bookmark, always kept it in whatever book she was reading, making sure she left it out in places where he could see, made sure he knew she appreciated the gift. And after they’d exchanged gifts, they’d gone over to Tommy and Maria’s with Ellie for dinner, and Maria had made an _amazing_ cheesecake for dessert. That was a good day.

Was it really a good day? Joel closed the bathroom door, started brushing his teeth. Christmas of last year. They slept in, then stoked the fire, drank hot tea and shared a blanket on the couch, pajamas staying on until they had to leave for dinner. In November, she’d secretly gone into his pack, found that wretched scarf she’d made him, and taken the thing back, forcing Maria to teach her how to unravel it and use the wool again. This time, she would get it. She would make this fucking scarf. She didn’t care if she lost a finger in the process; she would make this damn scarf, and she would make it _right_. And because Joel always scrunched the old one down around the neck of his jacket, she changed the design, with Maria’s help; instead, Joel would get a cowl, all one circle, not rectangular anymore. When she gave him the gift, he looked relieved, then said he swore he’d lost this and didn’t know how to tell her, so whenever the weather got cold, he acted as unassuming as possible. _Oh, why am I not wearing a scarf? That is such an interesting question. There is a very good reason for this._ And she laughed, told him he was an idiot, then watched as he cautiously held out something wrapped in a pillowcase, makeshift gift-wrapping. He told her that what he held out for her wasn’t very good. He told her he could make something better if she wanted him to.

There had to be a loose thread. There had to be a woven-in end that, once she finally found it, she could use to unravel the whole memory, turn it into something objective and drab, something she could stare directly at and find obvious flaws in. He left the bathroom, started heading downstairs. Later, she would need to go out for groceries, pick up bread and milk, and tonight, they would have a proper dinner, not one spent in an across-the-table standoff, freezer vegetables covered in whatever herbs had survived the winter, not something that left her hungry as she washed the dishes afterward. She needed real food. She ought to talk to Maria about what Joel had said when he returned. And the front door opened, a beat for him to pick up his pack, and then, he was gone, the door clicking shut, shifts in the porch-steps, not bothering with a goodbye. She was free now. If she so desired, she could get up, walk downstairs, and look through the dining room windows as he walked toward the gates, his back to her, his pace so painfully normal, nothing in the world wrong. This was another day, another normal day in the settlement, and everyone would head to their places of work, and she would stay indoors, the last of the flu leaving her body, her back aching less, her body less tired. But to her, something was wrong. No, everything was wrong, and she felt as if she were standing on a frozen lake, and she could see cracks in the ice, and the cracks were edging toward her, her doom within sight. She waited for tragedy to drown her, but the tragedy never seemed to come, and she was stuck on the ice, any step in another direction bringing about her downfall. She needed to stand here, and not shift her weight. No matter what she feared, she needed to stay still, or else something terrible would happen.

Though she didn’t want to watch him walk away, she needed to get up anyway, so she forced herself out of bed, and, wait. Shit. Fuck. Thrusting the covers off of her lap, she looked down, and surely enough, there was the telltale stain. She didn’t understand how she could bleed onto the sheets without noticing. And now, she would need to wash the sheets, put the summery cotton ones on the bed instead, and Joel would come home and ask why she’d changed the sheets, and she would tell him that she'd gotten her period, but she wouldn’t want to tell him that, not because it made him uncomfortable - after all, he’d been the one to get bloodstains out of her pants back in the QZ - but because she didn’t want him to know things like that. If someone were to stain their bed, she wanted that person to be him, not her. And her underwear felt sticky, and at least Maria had had someone sew her pads after she recovered from the infection she’d had when she first arrived in Jackson, so her government-issued ones from the QZ, scratchy pieces of shit, could be pushed to the back of her drawer. At least she didn’t need to use rags. But she hated doing laundry, and she hated, _hated_ the feeling of wet clothes, and she wanted this morning to be easy. She wanted to stop thinking. She would kill for a tampon, and she wanted to go back to bed, but her sheets were covered in blood, and the thought of taking his side instead made her wince, so she ripped the sheets from their bed, threw the covers onto the ground, her pants clinging to her skin. She hated being caught off-guard. She hated being the last to know. And she wanted to scream, but she knew that that wouldn’t help. The worst part of growing up was knowing that the drastic, awful things she so badly wanted to do wouldn’t make her feel any better.

She wore her headphones as she walked to the market, mittens on, hands scrunched up to conserve heat. After all the rain yesterday, some of the walkways were icy, so she took her time, not wanting to repeat her week of being stuck at home. And the sky would remain that specific shade of grey until the unseen sun set, and because Joel usually did the grocery run, Tess picking up produce from the gardens at the end of her workday, she didn’t know what she would be allotted at the market, if she could throw in day-old scones and not go over their quota for the month. Oh, she wanted a scone. She wanted food. She wanted ice cream and a steak-and-mushroom panini and that cheesecake Maria had made for their Christmas dinner. She wanted to feel full again

The aisles were packed with food, thank goodness. In her weeklong absence, the gardens hadn’t fallen apart. A carton of eggs, a gallon of milk. She’d been meaning to make yogurt for weeks now, and to make granola from the rest of last year’s oats. Last night, she avoided Joel by putting beans and salt in a pot filled with water, then leaving that pot in the fridge, so tonight, they could feast, at least on this year’s terms. And the sourdough loaves were a few days old, but that meant she might get one at a lower price, maybe not even have it count toward their quota for the month. When she saw the whole chickens in the freezer, she wondered what Joel had had to sacrifice for one of those, then forced herself not to think about it.

Luckily, they were still on track for the rest of the month, no overdrawing. While Jesse, the kid she most commonly saw working the front desk of the market, moved papers around on his clipboard and found their names together - they were listed as _Miller, Joel and Theresa,_ and the last name bothered her more than the misspelling of her first did - then wrote down each of her groceries. Making small talk, he asked how things were going in the gardens, and she said that things were alright, the iPod crushed into the pocket of her pants, contraband, she didn’t want anyone knowing she had it. If someone saw her white, telltale headphones, they could at least pretend she had those headphones hooked up to a CD player, but no, an iPod was worth a lot more. Jesse started talking about the Dungeons and Dragons campaign he was the dungeon master for, and though Tess didn’t understand any of these words, she watched his pen move across the paper and was glad to listen instead of talk. Apparently, Dina had conquered something last week, and Ellie’s character had been stuck at the bottom of a hole the whole time. Dina still wanted Tess to join, if she felt so inclined. And why hadn’t she been at the gym this past week? Dina had mentioned the absence, so Tess said she’d had the flu, and Jesse said damn, that’s rough. And when he finished recording her groceries, she looked down at his list for the month and saw the list of things Joel had gotten on the day he made her soup. Onions, garlic, celery, and carrots, and a whole chicken too, and noodles as well. Noodles weren’t easy to get, so either he lucked out or he went for a barter of some kind. Packing her groceries into one of the canvas bags she'd nearly forgotten to bring with her, she wondered how he’d managed the noodles. She wondered why he’d bothered, given that chicken soup alone would have been enough.

On the walk home, she thought about noodles. She thought that, with enough thinking, she could discover some quiet truth about him, something that would make him make sense, but in reality, he wasn’t a complicated man, and she wasn’t a complicated woman either. No, they were simply two lost people who had found each other and not known what to do as a result. Neither of them had been made for love. Had their lives taken the linear paths they’d once dreamed of, they would both be unremarkable, Tess stuck in a doctoral program she hated, Joel wondering if he could’ve been more than just a father, and their paths never once would have crossed. Or maybe they would end up in the same airport terminal, and she would be working on her laptop, a report due in two hours, she couldn’t submit another late one, and he would be flying to a funeral, and they would sit alongside each other and never interact. Her boarding pass wouldn’t spell her name like _Theresa_. Maybe she would even have a passport. And he would be seated in economy because airline tickets were expensive as shit, but she would be in business class because she was flying to a conference, the ticket written off as an expense for a business that wasn’t hers. Good thing, too, for she wouldn’t have been able to afford the ticket otherwise, one of her roommates flaking on the lease, once-a-month paychecks from the university making her struggle to budget. In line to get on the plane, she would be stuck behind him, and he would bear-hug his backpack because he feared theft in airports, and she would shut her laptop but not all the way, for she couldn’t waste time typing in her password again, her report too pressing. She would need to submit it before takeoff, and this idiot was in her way, couldn’t find an overhead bin in which to put his carry-on, and she tried and failed to squeeze past him, she was at the front of the plane while he was at the back, and she hoped the internet connection would still work in this big, flying metal tube. What if she missed her connection? She would blame him, even though she wouldn’t ever see him again. Her article would be late. She would think about quitting but never actually quit because quitting made her feel small. Her life would be better, but only in ways that didn’t make her feel any better now.

Maybe she was attached to their shared tragedy. Maybe she didn’t want them to have a different story. Maybe she liked that he’d seen the violence, the anger, the vitriol within her, and cared for her anyway. Maybe she liked that her first impression of him years ago had been _wounded._ And maybe she wouldn’t trade the old world for the one she had now, for she liked that this new world stayed honest, that people could be evil and never need to pretend not to be, that she had a sense of power over her life even if only because she could kill the people who harmed her. When the outbreak began, she’d been just old enough to question the world around her, and maybe life was better now that people died tragic but visible deaths. She didn’t need to put effort into learning that the world was cruel; instead, the world displayed that cruelty, a free-admission museum exhibit, open indefinitely. In the old world, she had to wade through student loan information, had to become a lower-class poster child for her university not because she was poor but because the administration wanted her to be, had to watch students binge-drink on weekends and call that fun. At least in this world pain was called pain, and though some suffered more than others, everyone still universally suffered.

The front door stuck a little as she tried to open it. She would need to have Joel look at the hinges, for she wasn’t tall enough to see the top one. And the eggs and milk went into the fridge, onions and garlic on the counter. If she started boiling the beans now, she might have a decent lunch. Drain the soak-water, pour the beans into a new pot, roughly chop an onion into thirds, leave garlic cloves whole after peeling. Food was a good place to start. And there were still vegetables and potatoes leftover from yesterday; she could heat those up in a pan, at least have something warm to eat. After lighting the stove, leaving a lid on the pot, she went into the laundry room, their bedsheets hanging on a makeshift line close to the ceiling, the stain thankfully out of the fabric. Though the sheets weren’t dry yet, they might be dry before Joel got home, so she wouldn’t even need to put the cotton sheets on the bed in the meantime.

When she lifted up the corner of one sheet, she looked out the window in the laundry room and stilled, for Ellie was in the backyard, walking out of her shed. Their gazes met, and Tess stood there frozen, the edge of the sheet still in her hand, the recognition uncomfortable. Ellie had bags under her eyes, and only wore a sweatshirt and jeans. If she exhaled, they both would be able to see her breath, and though a window separated them, Tess felt as if the barrier meant nothing, as if they could see each other more clearly this way. In Ellie, Tess saw opportunity. She saw that this girl had a life, one that could be made worth living. And no one in this world could survive without inflicting pain in the process, but all things considered, Ellie had inflicted so little pain. She could be a good person for the rest of her life. She could move forward without the nightmares that plagued Joel’s nights, nightmares Tess oftentimes pretended didn’t happen because acting otherwise made Joel upset. And what did Ellie see in Tess? Before she could complete the thought, Ellie broke their eye contact, then headed out of the backyard, and Tess let go of the sheet, wondering if what Ellie saw in her wasn’t hope or promise but instead cowardice and maleficence. 

And then, a knock came at the door. When Tess opened up, she knew who to expect.

“Hey,” Ellie said, glancing toward the living room, her hands shoved into her pockets. “Can we talk?”

* * *

Suddenly, the movement of a wooden spoon through a pot of beans became captivating. Tess wanted to watch that swirl for hours, aromatics and cooking stock, big cloves of garlic, the aroma heavenly. She hadn’t eaten anything today, and because the best she could offer the girl in the next room was a glass of milk, she didn’t want Ellie to stay for lunch. And she didn’t want Ellie sitting on her couch, all things considered, for she didn’t know the specifics of what had happened. Had Joel clued her in - or even given some indication of what Salt Lake City had meant for him - she could handle this, but she didn’t know, and now, she needed to confront Ellie about things she didn’t know. And what did Ellie want from her? _A truce,_ she thought as she brought the beans to a low simmer, put the pot’s lid back on. Leave them for half an hour, at least. She didn’t think Ellie would want to stay longer than half an hour.

And the girl still had her hands in her pockets when Tess came into the living room, shoulders hunched, knees pressed together. Had Maria let her take today off from her farm duties? Or maybe Ellie had slept in and stayed home, not asking for permission. Tess would’ve done the latter, had she been in Ellie’s shoes. 

As Tess sat down on the couch, her gaze stuck on the bookshelves, Joel’s carvings and her books displayed, a dreamcatcher that had been left behind in this house hanging in the middle. On the shelf beneath the dreamcatcher, Joel had put one of their wedding photographs, the only one they’d had developed from the reel Tommy had taken with Maria’s old camera. Not wanting to waste developing chemicals, they’d only asked to have that picture developed, a black-and-white picture of Tess trying and failing to undo the ridiculous tie Joel had chosen to wear that day. On one of their patrol routes, Joel had found a nice wooden frame, thankfully unused, no ghosts left behind, and he’d put the picture into that frame, then left the frame on their bookshelves, the only picture they kept downstairs. Though they had pictures on their end-tables and dressers upstairs, the only picture they kept down here was this one wedding photo, and not even a picture from the ceremony. But she liked how the two of them were in focus while the background slightly blurred. She liked how the framing of the side of her face made it obvious she was talking to him, and asking him why he’d bothered wearing this tie. And he smiled so softly at her, as if he were the only one who could see her doing this, as if he’d never been as charmed as he was right then, watching her struggle to untie his tie. 

But she was getting sidetracked, and Ellie hummed with unsaid words, disconcerting anticipation. Tess needed to give the girl some kind of release.

“Sorry about that,” Tess said, trying to look relaxed. “Pantry’s pretty empty. If I’d known you were coming by, I wouldn’t have put anything on the stove.”

“That’s fine,” Ellie said, nodding, trying to match Tess’s false relaxation, trying to clear the air between them.

“What did you want to talk about?” 

Ellie took a deep breath, hands coming out of her pockets and resting on her lap. In her mind, she’d had this conversation countless times before, but when it came time to execute that conversation, she felt at a loss for words. 

“I assume Joel told you about what happened yesterday,” Ellie gave, sounding exhausted. She didn’t want to rehash the day, didn’t want to relive those emotions or even think about what Joel had done, for if she thought about it at all, she would get angry and upset, and she didn’t know what she would do then.

Though Joel hadn’t told Tess anything, Tess said, “He did.”

Ellie nodded toward her lap. No surprises.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about our first few days here,” Ellie said. “I...I never thought he was telling me the truth. Or, well, I thought he was protecting me from something. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to trust him in the same way again, but I think I felt alright about that. I think I wanted him to protect me, not because I knew he was doing it right but because I knew I would be too scared otherwise. And then, the lies got bigger, and I needed to see it all for myself, which I don’t think is the version he told you.”

Though Joel hadn’t told Tess any version, she nodded anyway, agreed with the girl. Yes, there was bias, and in the end, truth didn’t exist, firsthand accounts being notoriously unreliable; all the remained were the stories, the ones told by Joel, Ellie, and the Fireflies, and Tess would need to piece together what had happened from those stories, try to create as clear a picture as possible. But she trusted Joel. She knew that he wouldn’t have left Ellie to die. 

“I think I’ve figured out when he told you what happened,” Ellie said, looking up and toward the window, not looking at Tess. “You both went for a walk. I think it was the first time any of us got away from Tommy and Maria in those first few days. I remember you both coming back and looking kind of haunted.”

He’d told her in the orchard at the edge of town, the two of them sitting in the grass and looking up at the mountains, his voice wavering. From his tone, she could tell that he felt ashamed not of his actions but of what Tess might think of him now that she knew, so she reached out and touched his thigh, trying to calm him. She’d seen him slit throats; if he spared a life, the last thing she would do was hate him for it.

“I guess I’m just wondering why you stood by him,” Ellie gave, trying to shrug it off, but she couldn’t fool Tess. No, the girl Tess once had been wouldn’t have let this go so easily. She would have pestered and poked and prodded and even yelled to get her way, but beforehand, she would’ve acted so civil that the people around her felt as if they owed her something. She would’ve manipulated in whatever way she see fit, for she didn’t know how to live otherwise.

Why had Tess stood by him? She’d stood by him because she loved him, as dumb and as small as that sounded. When he returned to Jackson, he looked at her with a kind of awe that made her uncomfortable, and she wanted to take that awe and use it to make a better life. She wanted a better life, and she knew he wanted a better life too. And, in the end, she agreed with his reasoning. Had she been there, she would’ve done the same, maybe even done worse. Though he’d shown no mercy, she would’ve been outright violent, smearing blood on the walls, screaming to whoever would listen that this was wrong, killing this girl was wrong, and if they wanted to find a cure so badly, then they could wait until the girl was of a consenting age, or at minimum until she regained consciousness. 

And Tess knew her greater stake in this cure. She knew that she too could’ve been killed to save humanity. And that day, she told Joel what her decision would have been, and for the first time during their conversation in the orchard, he seemed calm.

“I stood by him because I understood his reasoning,” Tess said, trying to tread lightly. “In the same situation, I think I would have done the same.”

Ellie nodded, but she looked more tired than before. So far, she hadn’t heard anything she hadn’t expected to hear.

“That wasn’t his choice to make,” Ellie said, the words concise and cutting. There was no arguing with her on this point. 

“It was a choice he was forced to make,” Tess said, trying to sound impartial, trying to sound as if she agreed wholeheartedly with Ellie. Maybe, under different circumstances, Joel would have done something else entirely, and though Tess knew that that wasn’t true, maybe she could lie well enough to Ellie that the girl would drop this conversation.

Looking straight at Tess, her gaze intense, Ellie asked, “What would you have done?”

Tess swallowed, said, “I wouldn’t have let them take you, not without your knowledge. I would’ve made sure you had some say in whether you lived or died.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Ellie said, shaking her head, surprised that Tess had misunderstood. “What would you have done, had you been in my place?”

And she knew the answer. She’d asked herself the same question when Joel told her his truth, and the answer had been so close by, as if she’d been waiting for a reason to reach for that answer, as if she’d prepared it the moment she realized she was immune. 

“I wouldn’t have gone through with it,” she said, for about this she couldn’t lie.

She watched as Ellie’s face changed, curiosity turning to contempt, brows furrowing with shock. No, that was not the correct answer.

“That’s so selfish,” Ellie said. “How could you live with that?”

And though Tess knew the question was rhetorical, she forced out, “I don’t think it’s selfish at all.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Ellie asked, tone authoritative. She knew better than Tess did; nothing Tess said would convince her otherwise.

“Because my life has value,” Tess said, though saying that aloud made the statement feel somehow untrue. “Because I am still alive, and that has to mean something. I haven’t fought this hard for this long to let it all go, and for what? Some half-assed promise of a cure? I want to see evidence. I want there to be proof that I wouldn’t die in vain, for I’ve seen enough people die for a fruitless cause to know better. And how would they produce a vaccine, should something within me help them find a cure? I don’t know how they would vaccinate against a fungal infection, and plainly, they don’t have the resources to mass-produce such a thing. Who would be immune, then? Would it just be the Fireflies? Heaven knows that what remains of our government wouldn’t trust anything they said.”

She took a deep breath, stared at her lap as she pressed on.

“And even if they could find a cure, even if there were the means to distribute that cure to everyone left on this planet, I still wouldn’t be saving all those who died before me,” she said. “I wouldn’t give their deaths meaning, and if they weren’t dead yet, then I wouldn’t be able to give them back the lives they once had. In a world with a cure, there would still be infected, and there would still be people who died too soon, and there would still be suffering. There would still be so much suffering. Maybe I could make a difference in my death, or maybe I couldn’t. But I wouldn’t want my fate left in the hands of people who thought my life was negligible. No, my life is worth something, and in a world where I’m given few choices, I will use whatever choices I’m allowed in the ways I see fit. And I wouldn’t let them touch me. I wouldn’t let them fucking touch me.”

In the silence that followed, she could hear her heart pound, blood pressure high in her temples. She didn’t want to get upset. She didn’t want to be angry. Though Joel couldn’t, Tess could let Ellie go. If this girl wanted to hate her, then, sure, alright, she could live with that. She could live with a younger version of herself thinking that the cushy, girlish life she now lived was despicable. But still, she didn’t want to be despicable. No, she wanted her reasoning to seem sound. She didn’t want to be a selfish person, or someone worth looking at in the way Ellie looked at her now. Though she could live with this girl alone hating her, she wasn’t sure she could live with being a person worth hating.

“You wouldn’t even give them the benefit of the doubt?” Ellie asked, though her tone made it sound as if she wasn’t asking a question and instead was reaffirming her own beliefs. “You think that all that has happened already would make your sacrifice worthless?”

Tess sighed, pressing her palms against her jeans. No, she didn’t think her sacrifice would be worth anything, but she didn’t think she could convince Ellie of the same thing.

“The world has never been a good place, Ellie,” Tess said, “and suffering is as old as this earth is. If the cordyceps hadn’t made the world a whole lot worse, then something else would’ve. People more powerful than me have tried to make this world a better place, and more often than not, they’ve failed. And I could try to save the world, but I don’t have that kind of power. I don’t think anyone does, really. In the end, all I can do is use the life I’ve been given to try to make someone else’s life better. And I think I’ve been able to do that here. I think that, had I died for a cure that may never come, the world might’ve been a worse place. I don’t think I’m selfish for doing what I can to help this community. I don’t think I’m selfish for not sacrificing myself for a cause I don’t believe in.”

“At the capitol building in Boston, you believed in this cause,” Ellie said, staring at Tess with disbelief. “Your dying wish. You wanted Joel to take me to the Fireflies. You were hell-bent on finding a cure. How could that possibly have changed?”

 _Because everything changed,_ she thought. _Because it was easier to believe in the Fireflies when I thought I had moments left to live. Because I thought I knew enough about immunology to not expect human sacrifice to play a part. Because I assumed they would draw blood, maybe cerebrospinal fluid at most. Because you would be the cure I would never be. But they wanted to kill you, Ellie, and given the chance, they would kill me too. They would kill me in a heartbeat, and maybe that’s because they want to save the world, but plenty of people who’ll kill you in a heartbeat don’t have such altruistic motives. And I’m not sure I could save anyone, but I could save you, Ellie. I wanted a cure, but not at any cost. Not at any cost._

She didn’t respond in time, so Ellie huffed, shook her head.

“Fuck you, Tess,” Ellie said, then stood up and headed for the door. 

* * *

The beans stuck to the bottom of the pot. She had to scrape the corners, come away with thick potcakes, hope that those bits would mix into the rest of the beans. Tomorrow, maybe she could pick up some beef for dinner, find a way to forget all she’d done today.

When the front door opened, she winced. The only person who wouldn’t knock first was Joel.

“Hey, Tess?” he called, but he wasn’t looking for her. No, this was a warning signal, he would now be entering the house, he was announcing his presence, he halfheartedly hoped she would be napping upstairs or, even better, off running errands, leaving him alone.

“In the kitchen,” she called back, staring down at the beans. In a separate pan, she had vegetables heating up; if he’d come searching for lunch of some kind, she could give him half of those, plus some of these beans, and he would be gone shortly. 

She heard him come in, lean against one of the counters. Though he was still far away, she felt as if he were standing too close by, as if he were watching her every move and analyzing her intentions.

“Went to the market,” she said, nodding toward the refrigerator, not facing him. “Eggs and milk. Should keep us fed for a while.”

“Are you going back to the gardens tomorrow?” he asked, the _you look better today_ only implied.

“I think so,” she said, but the truth was that, if she didn’t return tomorrow, then surely she would go insane in this house. She needed space. She needed people who weren’t Joel and Ellie.

Going into the cabinets, she found two plates, started to dish beans and vegetables onto each. But she didn’t want to eat beans and vegetables. No, she wanted to eat a whole cheesecake. She wanted a Christmas dinner, all for herself. This life wasn’t worth surviving on beans and vegetables and little else.

“How’s your work going?” she asked, forcing small talk as she set two plates down on their little kitchen table by the window. 

Sometime in the last week, her basil plant on the sill had died a slow, painful death. She wished he would notice brown leaves and give the damn plant some water from time to time. She missed that basil.

“Fine,” he said, going into the silverware drawer and finding them forks and knives.

He sat down, then slid a fork and knife in front of her, his gaze stuck on his meal. Was he upset with her for having cooked this? Did she care?

And there were countless things she could say to him, countless questions she could ask. _What happened in Salt Lake City? Why did you turn cold after I told you I loved you? Ellie came by today, and I think she might hate me more than she hates you, for you took her choice from her, but I told her that her choice would’ve been an awful one. And why is it that you don’t love me? I’m not good at this, Joel. We both know I’m not good at this. But at some point, you could’ve said no. You didn’t need to marry me. You didn’t even need to entertain that possibility. And maybe I mislead you. Maybe I made us both think that it was a party and little else. But it meant something to me, Joel, and I can’t see how it couldn’t have meant something to you. And do you know the last person I said those words to? It was my father, right as he dropped me off at the bus station in Asheville. I was going back for my second year of college, and before I got on the bus, he hugged me and told me he loved me, and I told him I loved him too. And I never saw him again. I never saw any of my family again. And the first person who’s made those words feel close in the two decades since then is you, Joel, and that’s an honor. That’s a fucking honor, and you wasted it. I’m not a stupid girl for being angry with you; you’re a stupid man for pretending that that’s not worth something._

Instead, she kept quiet as his fork hit the ceramic plate. They both stared down at their lunch, not daring to look up. This time, he wouldn’t compliment her cooking, not that he ever did, not that her cooking was ever worthy of a compliment. Today, food was for sustenance and sustenance alone, hunger merely an inconvenience, and he would return to his work while she stayed alone in this too-big house, and they would both dread coming back together for dinner because speaking the truth to each other would crack the ice they stood on, make them both drown. 

She picked up her fork and started eating.


	16. Salt (Part 1)

When the alarm sounded, too early, always too early, Joel waited for Tess to turn the thing off, but she didn’t, and it rang again, and again. No, he needed to be the one to turn it off, so he leaned on one forearm, stretched his other arm out as far as it could reach, and where was the button? He could find the snooze, of course he could find the snooze, but where was the proper button? Sighing, he sat up, then wrenched the clock’s cord from its socket. There. Finally. On her bedside table, the clock sat askew, the cord dangling away from the wall. He was awake, and this was the cost.

Apparently, they’d last fought on a weekend, for he’d woken naturally the next morning, no blaring alarm. Or, no, he’d been the one on the couch that time, all because she’d decided to pick a fight. But then again, she’d been the one to pick a fight last night, so maybe there wasn’t a cosmic order, a sense of logic to who went where, and instead, their sleeping arrangements depended on tolerance, stress, and - he winced - some level of hatred. The last time they fought, he’d slept downstairs because he didn’t want to look at her after the stunt she’d pulled, but this time, she’d egged him on, then had been angry about what she’d seen. As he got out of bed, went into the closet, he wondered what she’d expected to find. Had she expected him to feel differently this time? He wished she would stop asking. Back in the QZ, she held steadfast to their silent boundaries, rarely breaking their quiet rules, and he did the same, no questions about the past, no questions of her mental state, no judgmental language. They were both fuckups, so they chose not to talk about being fuckups, and that plan worked great. But now, she kept pestering him, and he didn’t know how to ask her to stop without making her angry, so he asked her to stop, and then, she got angry. He wondered if she found this as obnoxiously repetitive as he did, but then again, she would’ve stopped long ago had she felt the same.

It was raining. His raincoat hung by the door downstairs. Late April, and the rain wouldn’t let up, so Tess would come in late, hair damp, the plants in the gardens covered, hopefully the winds wouldn’t be too rough. And the lightning in the sky, their bedroom would light with each strike, and he wondered if they ought to be scared, if in this world lightning could be a killer. He’d heard of people dying of almost everything, but lightning? Not today, not anymore, but the flashes in the sky looked like the capillaries in her eyes, thin and severe, and he wondered if they ought to be scared. But when it last rained like that, torrential downpour, thunderclaps that could wake the dead, he’d stared at their bedroom ceiling and felt an empty kind of nothing, and half-asleep, Tess had reached out toward him, her arm over his stomach, one of her knees resting in between his, and he’d swallowed hard, not knowing what to do. He thought he should be scared but wasn’t. He thought he should reach for her too but didn’t. Instead, he stared at the white ceiling above them, water damage, he’d been in the attic at the beginning of the month, patching a leak in their roof, so it wasn’t all white. If rain could get in, then surely lightning could. Years and years ago, Sarah had learned about Chinese dynasties in school, and he couldn’t remember the specifics, but he could think of a family who had put dragon statues - or maybe they weren’t dragons - on their roof, and those statues were said to block lightning, keep it from harming their home. He wondered if they ought to put up dragons, but he also didn’t care. He stared up at the white ceiling, mind blank, and a clap of thunder, count the seconds, then a lightning strike. If he so desired, he could calculate how many miles away the lightning was, but he didn’t care. White ceiling, thunder clap, Tess against him, a flash of light in their bedroom, and he felt nothing, for there was nothing for him to feel.

At least the days were getting warmer. As he put on his pants, buttoned his shirt, he hoped he wouldn’t come home soaked and cold. Across town, he and a crew had managed to clear out one of the old, uninhabited houses, and today, they meant to put in a pipe system for water, but maybe the rain would result in a spare day off. A day off would be nice. He was tired. He hadn’t been sleeping very well. And he hated sleeping in the middle of the day, but maybe he could catch some shuteye, or put in one of the _St. Elsewhere_ tapes and drown out his thoughts. He wasn’t interested in participating in the world today, or even in his own household, for as he went downstairs, he stilled right before the living room, craning his neck so that he could see her lying on the couch, blanket tucked tightly around her body, making a cocoon. Facing the couch cushions, she didn’t show him her face, and he wondered if he ought to wake her, but he had an inkling that she was only pretending to sleep, that she was waiting for him to leave before she uncurled herself from her makeshift bed, stretched out, and headed upstairs to get dressed. And he didn’t want to disrupt her plans. 

And more than that, he didn’t want to talk to her. Quietly, he walked to the front door, pulled his raincoat on, stepped one by one into his boots, and before he left, he stole one last glance back at her, still curled up, a lump on the couch, resting beneath a blanket they’d shared plenty of times, and though she was shorter than he was, she still needed to bend her knees in order to fit. She could only ever sleep on her side. Whether they were on thin-as-hell QZ mattresses, the second floor of a long-abandoned house somewhere between Massachusetts and Wyoming, or their wonderful mattress upstairs, she always slept on her side, couldn’t sleep any other way. And she slept on her side on the couch, and he wondered how her back would feel as they took to their patrol route. No, Tess patrolled with Dina now, a kind gesture more than anything else, he shouldn’t be insulted by it, for Dina’s mother had died over the winter, and after Dina was approved for paired patrols, Tess volunteered to take the girl out, show her the different routes. Really, Joel shouldn’t be insulted, for had Ellie been approved for patrols - not that he would know - he would’ve done the same, or at least asked Tess to do the same on his behalf. So he shouldn’t be insulted. And Tommy held his own, better than, so Joel had nothing to complain about. After all, he didn’t want to talk to Tess right now, and maybe he wouldn’t have to talk to her until this evening, right as their nightly dinner standoff began. He wondered if she would pester him again. Though he hoped she wouldn’t, he knew better than to expect her to change.

But as he walked toward the gate, rain coming down lightly, he thought of her on their couch. He thought of the arch of her back. He thought of her vertebrae, bones against skin as she slept naked alongside him, hands in front of her face, her back to him. And their sheets were grey, and her hair was long enough now that it sometimes spread onto his pillow even if she put it in a bun before bed, and she would turn over and face him, curl up next to him, whatever they’d said that day fading away. He knew she felt frustrated by him, but he didn’t know what else to do. What she wanted from him, he couldn’t give her, so he held her out of obligation. He held her to prove to them both that he could, but he still didn’t believe he could, for there was no way to keep her. No, she was reckless, she deliberately put herself in harm’s way, and immunity wasn’t worth shit when there were a million other reasons someone might want to kill you. And maybe someone wouldn’t kill either of them in the end. Dina’s mother had died in her sleep. Around town, he heard of people with presumed cancer and heart disease, a strange lump or trouble walking up stairs, and there was nothing to be done. He might wake up one morning and find her body cold alongside his, and then, he would be alone in this house, wondering if he ought to go tell someone what had happened or instead continue living in a world where some people thought Tess still existed.

The rain felt like pokes against his skin, soft on his jacket but still too much stimulation. When he ducked into the barn, he pulled off his hood, feeling relieved. Now, the horses. He watched the stablehands put a blanket on Winnie, then stilled as he saw the patches on the blanket. Tess’s handiwork. She didn’t even like sewing, but back when they first became residents of this settlement, Maria had sat them each down, even Ellie, and asked what skills they had. Had any of them been medical practitioners? Did any of them have experience working with livestock? Could any of them work with the mechanics of a hydroelectric dam? While Joel had had _heavy machinery_ and _home repair_ written down, Tess had been pressed for a skill. Networking? Did that count? But it wasn’t the classic version of networking; in her version, she could shoot whoever didn’t like her. But at the last moment, he’d commented that she might be able to help with medical matters, given how expertly she stitched wounds, and Maria had perked up and asked if Tess could sew. So now, she had a reputation, and she would sit in their workshop upstairs and complain the whole time as she closed a rip on a child’s winter jacket. _Piece of shit,_ she would say, _and they’re just going to outgrow this thing anyway. You know what my mother did when my brothers ripped holes in their jackets? She put some duct tape on top, and when they inevitably ripped it again, she added more._

He patted the horse’s neck, sweet old girl. He tried to shift his focus. Hopefully, Winnie wouldn’t hate the rain.

* * *

She got home first, so she made dinner, roasted chard and fish he and Tommy had caught over the weekend. To his surprise, she knew how to filet, and when he came home, he watched in the kitchen as she deftly brought her knife down, ever-so-slightly grazing the skin. But now the house smelled like fish, so the windows were open, cold air coming in. As she ate, she shivered.

“I went to see Maria this afternoon,” Tess gave, fork against her plate, gaze down. 

Today, she’d tied her hair back in a braid, for that way she could tuck into her raincoat’s hood easier. She looked different. Though she wore her same sweatshirt as always, headband tied behind her ears, she looked like a different person, like someone who looked so familiar though he couldn’t remember her name. 

“What about?” he asked.

She shrugged, said, “Just to talk.”

“Still don’t get how you two are friends.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Tess said, but she wasn’t joking around, and instead, she sounded tired. He wondered if she’d slept less than he had last night.

“Anything interesting happen?”

She shook her head. 

“Tommy wants to go fishing again this weekend,” she said. “He had a good time when you guys went.”

“Yeah, I had a good time too.”

Though the fish tasted good, he didn’t like chard, but he thought that telling her he didn’t like chard would start an argument, so he tried to budget his fish properly, combine every bite with some of the chard. He only had a little bit of fish left, so he pressed down his fork, tried to flake the pieces, but now, the pieces were too small. How would he be able to pick up those tiny pieces with his fork? But he would rather think about fish on his fork than think about Tess talking to Maria.

“I’m sorry about last night.”

His fork stilled, but he tried to recover. He needed to act as if last night didn’t matter, for it didn’t. As usual, Tess had pestered him, and he’d gotten angry, and she’d gotten angrier. After having that same fight plenty of times before, he knew that none of those spats mattered. There would always be something he wouldn’t want to talk about, and though he’d thought she’d figured that out years ago, maybe she needed a reminder. And maybe, if she was apologizing, she’d found that reminder.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said, looking down at her plate, and as he watched her, he saw the creases in her forehead, the bags under her eyes. Though he wondered if she would be more specific on her own, he dared not ask for elaboration. “I think we’re both dealing with what we need to in whatever way we must. And I know I’ve been too much for you, and I’m sorry.”

When she met his gaze, he felt his heart pound, for he’d seen that look before, the quiet guilt, the sense of failure. She looked at him the way she had in the capitol building, right after he found out she was infected. She looked at him as if she owed him something better, as if she owed both of them something better. And did she? Thinking through the night beforehand, he tried to find where she’d gone wrong, and he could remember her washing dishes, and he looked out the window to see Ellie’s lights on, and Tess said that he ought to go talk to the girl, and he grimaced and said no, he shouldn’t. And Tess put down her dishes, and he realized he’d said the wrong thing, and she asked the same questions as always, and he gave the same answers as always, and she asked for something more, please, just something more, and he said no more firmly, hoping this time she would listen, but she didn’t. So he shouted at her, and she shouted back, and he told her that he didn’t need to deal with this, so he walked out while she shouted at him that he was being immature. And he didn’t have a set direction in mind, so he looped the town once, then twice, and the whole time, he thought of her, but only the qualities of her he disliked. He hated that she didn’t put caps back on their toothpaste tubes, especially given how quickly that stuff dried out. He hated that she insisted on keeping the house tidy, even the places only they saw. He hated that she was so fucking stubborn, that she wouldn’t budge on almost anything, that she took her opinions as the truth and refused to hear any other stance. And what he hated most, what he hated more than anything, was that she could see through him. He hated most that she played this certain game of pretend, trying to make life better for him in ways she attempted to keep him from seeing. If he had a nightmare, she pretended not to notice, for she’d tried to comfort him plenty of times and had been pushed away, and if he came home looking upset, she would start talking about something else, occupying his mind, forcing his attention to stay with her. And he could tell with ease the difference between Tess on her own and Tess acting for his sake. He wished she would stop pretending. He wished she would just let him be.

When he came home, she was asleep on the couch, and he knew better than to wake her. And he looked at her then and wondered if he was being the ridiculous, awful one, but no, he wasn’t, for she knew him well enough to understand that this was who he was. He hadn’t given her any false pretenses. She knew him well enough to know what caused a fight. No, this hadn’t been his fault, not even a little, so he went upstairs, headed to bed.

“Anyway,” she said awkwardly, taking his silence as a response. “The strawberries are starting to bloom.”

And the subject shifted, and they ended up on the couch together, the _St. Elsewhere_ tape in the VCR, and they shared a blanket not because he wanted to but because this was a cold spring and he didn’t want to bother with the fireplace. When she tucked the blanket beneath her thighs, pulled in closer to him, he looked down in the half-darkness fragmented by the television and saw that yes, this was the same blanket, the one she’d slept with on the couch, the one that had kept her warm. Little cocooned thing. She’d been so wrapped up, the blanket tight around her shoulders, a heathered grey self-made sleeping bag, and now, she leaned against him as if last night hadn’t happened. What had Maria said to her? Or, rather, why had Tess sought out Maria in the first place? He wasn’t naive, and he wasn’t an idiot either; he knew better than to think that Tess just wanted to chat. Maybe-

As she curled closer to him, head resting on his shoulder, arms wrapping around his body, he stilled, not sure what to expect. 

“Sorry,” she said, voice muffled, “it’s freezing in here.”

He knew how to play the part. Of course he knew how to play the part. Yes, he needed to reach out and rub her back, or he needed to kiss her forehead, or at minimum he needed to use one of his legs to nudge one of hers, and then, he needed to exhale deeply, act as if he’d never been so relaxed in his life. And on New Year’s Eve, they’d been curled up together in this same spot, drinking mead Tommy had fermented and laughing because, well, how was it that time still passed? Before they sat down together, he’d put lots of wood into the fireplace, so the house felt almost too warm, the harsh winter winds pressing against their windows but acting as no match for their warm little home, and because the town took a collective holiday on the first day of the year, any volunteering lookouts receiving an extra cut of meat for the month, they had nowhere to be, didn’t need to go to bed anytime soon. And she finished her glass and set it down on the floor alongside the couch, and at this point, he couldn’t tell which legs were hers and which were his, and he lay on his back while she loomed above, just drunk enough to be warm-cheeked and smiling, for once happy with the state of the world. Maybe he could be happy too. After all, they’d both lived through this year, and _this year_ had seen them bruised and battered, broken ribs and a concussion, and this year had covered them in the blood of a horde of infected, none of whom managed to overpower them. Maybe, despite all the horrors of this world, survival was worth something.

Now, she felt cold in his arms. He wondered if he ought to stoke the fire, but then again, they still had the thick wool blanket on their bed, so she wouldn’t be cold all night. And though he wanted to get up, wanted to put space between them, he thought she might be insulted by such an action, so he rubbed her back, leaned down to kiss her forehead, deeply exhaled in a way that made him seem relaxed. And he looked at the television screen even though he hadn’t been paying any attention to this episode.

In his peripheries, he watched her eyes flutter shut, comfortable enough in this position that she could fall asleep.

* * *

The next morning, she was the one to turn off the alarm clock, and afterward, she turned onto her other side the same way she usually did, and out of habit, he reached out for her, held her, _five more minutes._ And he’d tried to be more open last night, reaching for her in bed when he sensed that they both were struggling to fall asleep, two warm bodies in a too-cold house, the edge of the season making them feel off-kilter. He couldn’t let her apology go to waste, so he held her, and she sighed against him, too tired, too cold, not wanting to go out for patrols. Because he’d grown up without four distinct seasons, he only discovered the uncomfortable in-betweens as an adult, the thought of putting on a jacket in late April making him crave summer, a hot-as-hell day, and the sweat would cling to his shirt, and he’d drink so much water but still feel dehydrated. The end of the cold season made him crave a different kind of pain than the aches in his knees, a pain more like a sunburn or a racing heart in a too-warm body. And he knew Tess would drag her feet when she realized she needed to wear a sweater. 

Though she offered him breakfast, he brushed her off, and she looked thankful, not feeling hungry either. She thought twice before sticking her mittens into her pack. When they arrived at the barn, they found out that a couple of people were sick, so pairings would be shifted around; now, Tess was alone on the creek trails, and one of the leaders mentioned that Joel ought to join her, even things out. Luckily, Tess looked nonplussed, so they could maintain a facade of civility. They rode out in a civil way, headed up the slopes in a civil way, made it to the radio tower without conflict. Yes, they could work together well. Though some things had changed, they could still work together well.

“This feels kind of eerie,” she said as she marked the logbook, no infected, time to head back home. “I had a dream last night about you and me going on patrol together.”

Leaving the pen behind, she put her mittens back on, shrugged out of the radio tower. Those ropes tended to hurt her gardening hands, and he knew how much she hated having to wear gloves at work, greatly preferring trailing her bare fingers through the soil. In the half-seasonal cold, his own knuckles ached, but he’d left his gloves behind, not thinking he would need them this morning.

While they headed out of the tower, he kept quiet, but he could sense that she wanted him to ask her about the dream, so once they returned to the horses, he asked, “What were we doing on patrol?”

She didn’t need clarification; she stroked Echo’s mane, said, “We were on a new route, and this time, we found a lab of sorts tucked into the mountains. Top secret, that kind of thing. Almost like we were in a movie.”

“Did we go inside?”

She gave him a look, said, “'Course we went inside.”

“And what did we find?”

“Cryopreserved human remains.”

He blinked in surprise. Did she mean frozen parts, like an arm and a leg, maybe a brain? And did those parts make this dream of hers a nightmare?

“You know,” she said, shrugging off frozen bodies, “in those big metal tubes you see on TV. Filled with liquid nitrogen, preserving bodies until science can catch up. Reincarnation, so to speak.”

“Yeah,” he said, though he had no idea what she meant and instead pictured bodies in industrial freezers. 

“Anyway,” she said, “we broke in, and there’s maybe sixty tubes, and those don’t operate on electricity. No, they use liquid nitrogen to preserve bodies. I don’t know much about that kind of stuff, but if they didn’t need electricity to survive, then chances are that those bodies are still preserved. If the science for reincarnation ever becomes available, then those people could still live again.”

She mounted with practiced ease, boots in the stirrups, clipping her pack alongside the saddle-bags. He’d shot the rabbit that she’d turned into those mittens, and after he blacked out in the snow during a trade-gone-wrong, she’d touched his face, and he’d felt the rabbit fur against his skin, except he hadn’t felt anything at all because of his concussion. Maybe he still had a concussion, but no, he was right to think that something was off about her, for she’d told him that she wouldn’t wear those mittens on patrols because she struggled to shoot a gun while wearing them. Why had she worn them today? After the attack, she’d become hypervigilant, scaring because she heard bumps in the night, but now, she was acting as if her life was negligible. Why had she worn those mittens? She had a pair of gloves, nice leather gloves, and those were perfectly fine for shooting, and very warm too. But instead, she wore the rabbit fur ones, and - he felt his heart pound - maybe she’d worn them to show him she cared. Maybe this was another part of her apology, prompted by whatever she’d talked to Maria about. In order to show that she valued him, she wore mittens made from an animal he’d killed; this was her gesture of good faith, of love, of forgiveness. No, Joel, I will not start any more fights, and to prove that to you, I will wear these mittens.

And cryopreserved bodies. When she taught him about the northern lights, he’d seen in her a kind of childlike glee, two people staring up at the stars and feeling so small in comparison, their shared smallness making them unimportant within the universe and indescribably important to each other, and he could share her amazement. He cared about charged particles, whatever those were. He thought of flashing lights in the sky and marveled but only because he could share those lights with her. But cryopreserved bodies. Those wouldn’t come back. What if they did find some secret lab, tucked into the side of a mountain? And inside, there were metal tubes he couldn’t picture, and those tubes housed bodies, human bodies. Though they’d never talked about such things, he doubted she had hope for their species, and after Salt Lake City the first time - or, really, a decade before that - he’d lost faith in science as a savior, so even if those bodies were still frozen, they would remain frozen long after the human race became extinct. He wondered what God would think of that, trying to cheat death only to be frozen in time for eternity. He wondered how he felt about God in the end. And most of all, he wondered what had gone wrong with Tess. He wondered why she dreamed of finding the undead with him, just not the undead they’d been forced to kill countless times. What would be more ethical, leaving the bodies in case of a scientific discovery or removing the bodies from those tubes and giving them a burial because all hope had been lost? And really, what possessed him to think they’d have done anything other than shrug out of the lab, close the door, and pretend they hadn’t seen anything?

She was different now. He knew he was right about that. She used to be funny. She used to make fun of him. In the QZ, they’d developed a secret language, one punctuated by memorable but quiet gestures, obvious to each other but meaningless to everyone else, and she would speak to him in that way, and he would listen and understand. When confronted by an adversary, he could rely on the tiny shifts in Tess’s body language for information, and he could act on those impulses without fear of any consequences. They filled in each other’s gaps in that way; while she spoke in a way that demanded cooperation, he made sure he could bust the kneecaps of whoever they were intimidating, and then made sure he could hide the body afterward. Above all, they were a team, but now, as they rode home, he felt as if they were on different planets, speaking different languages, smiling awkwardly because they couldn’t quite understand each other. Cryopreserved bodies. What had they done about the bodies? He hated that human beings had thought the future would be up, up, and up. He didn’t understand why someone would want their body frozen indefinitely in hope of reincarnation. He wished that people had been able to understand and accept the constraints of this world, to see that there were certain kinds of magic but not kinds that meant storing bodies forever would save certain souls. No, the magic had been in how Tess could tremor two fingers, effectively telling him a deal was about to go south, and because she’d moved those two fingers, they would be the only ones to come out of the oncoming gunfire unscathed. She looked to science for answers, though he’d long ago lost faith in the discipline. But when he lost faith in science, he’d never thought there would come a day in which he would lose faith in her.

After the horses were back in the barn, after they’d reported their findings and finished this part of their morning together, they headed toward the house, her path to the gardens, his to his toolbelt. Though she mentioned stopping at the bar for some breakfast, he shook his head, still not hungry, and she conceded quietly, and he couldn’t understand what that concession meant. If she wanted breakfast, she could’ve forced him into it, had done exactly that plenty of times before, but instead, she nodded silently and followed him home. He wished she would speak up. He wished she would get angry about something stupid. He wished that Maria would say something about socks or the weather and make Tess so mad that she talked about it all evening, drowning out the _St. Elsewhere_ tape and making him wonder why he’d chosen to spend his life with her, marriage aside. Instead, she kept quiet on the walk home, headband covering her ears, the start of spring uncomfortably cold this year. She kept quiet in a way that made her seem not at all like Tess.

When she followed him into the house, he didn’t understand what she meant to do, but even indoors, he could see his own breath, so maybe she needed warmer clothes. At least the greenhouses would be toasty. He wasn’t sure what he and Tommy had on the agenda for today, but he didn’t care either. Really, he just wanted the day to end. Or, actually, he wanted his menial tasks to stretch on for hours. He didn’t mind getting lost in sawing timber or fixing pipes. No, he liked being stuck on a task that required his attention. So long as he could think about something other than Tess or Ellie or Salt Lake City or the pain he’d caused, he felt grand, and as he picked up his toolbelt by the door, he hoped that today would immerse him in a world in which nails and boards mattered far more than some strange dream Tess had had did. He wanted to find solid ground again.

But his toes were getting cold. He wished the spring would warm up. Unlacing his boots, figuring he would need to double up on socks, he headed upstairs, the work room’s door ajar, the bedroom open as always, and when he went into the bedroom, headed for the closet, he flinched as he saw her, not remembering that she’d followed him home. On the bed, she’d set out a coat and long underwear, winter layers they’d both assumed had been retired for the season, and she stood naked save for her underwear, her sweater shed, her pants left in a heap on the floor. Though they’d stopped being modest years ago, he swallowed hard, for had he remembered she was upstairs, he would’ve at least knocked.

“I’m sorry,” he said, staring down at the floor, and though he didn’t want to admit it to himself, he wasn’t sorry at all, and he wanted to look up.

They’d last had sex in March, or at least he assumed they had, for they had sex often enough but hadn’t had sex since everything had collapsed. At first, he’d been scared he wouldn’t be able to perform, and though she typically joked around if that happened - they’d known each other too long not to - he figured that now she would apologize and say _some other time_ like women in movies and not at all like Tess, and he would hate her for the change. But over time, he stopped caring about her reaction and started to avoid her instead. If he needed a release, he could masturbate in the shower, where he knew she wouldn’t join him. He figured she would end up doing the same. If she initiated something, then maybe he would participate, but he wouldn’t prompt her. What was the point? She wouldn’t be the same this time. She would want _more_ , whatever that meant, and he knew that he couldn’t give her that _more_ , and he wished she felt some kind of shame for having asked. After Salt Lake City, after Ellie telling him that they were through, Tess had looked so dark, haunted the same way he felt he was, and finally, he could offer someone comfort. He knew how to offer comfort. He’d had so much practice at telling others that everything would be okay even when he knew for certain that nothing would be okay. And he’d seen Tess sitting on the bed and wearing wet clothes, and she’d looked pitiful and desperate, and he’d held her because for once his presence meant something good to another person. Then, she spoke and ruined it, and he knew that it had all been a hoax, a horribly constructed facade. He’d been tricked. 

He’d never wanted her to love him, for love only hurt in the end. Love had torn Tommy from him, and now Ellie too, and Tess, someone he once saw as untouchable, would be next. The moment she spoke those words, she cemented her own drastic, violent fate. She would be next, and her death would be excruciating, and he would be forced to watch, and afterward, he would know he could’ve prevented this outcome had he just kept her quiet, kept the feelings to a minimum, always held her at arm’s length. This time, he would know that he was at fault, and he couldn’t live with that guilt. Though Tommy had come back, he knew he’d lost Ellie for good, and Tess would masquerade as the holy spirit, completing the triad, the three people he had managed to keep in this new world, and he’d lost all three, all because of who he was. And Tess was next. He knew beyond a doubt that Tess was next.

But when he looked up at her, she didn’t shy away from his gaze. She looked down, yes, but she wasn’t uncomfortable with her nakedness before him, only uncomfortable in the cold of this too-big house. Soon, the other gardeners would wonder where she was, and Tommy would scratch his head thinking of what had made Joel late, and he would be stuck on her body, on the bullet graze that nearly cost her her life, on the slashes on her arms, at the scrapes on her knees from before the cordyceps took hold. Her skin raised with goosebumps, and he felt the inescapable need to warm her up.

They hadn’t made the bed that morning. They didn’t even bother moving the clothes she’d set out. Instead, he focused on her, her skin beneath his warm palms, the arch of her hipbone, the taut muscles in her belly, the space between her legs. When she kissed him, she kissed as if he’d been gone for half a year and had just now returned, and she wanted to consume him, wanted to brand him, wanted him to wake up with an imprint of her name on his skin, and her legs wrapped around his waist pulled him closer, drawing him in. And for a while, he forgot that she would be his next victim. He forgot that, on some level, he hated her, and instead, he remembered how hearing her laugh in their apartment in the QZ turned the place from rat-infested to heaven, and how she willingly and readily sacrificed herself for the greater good, and how she presented herself as fearless to everyone except him. Afterward, he held her beneath the thick blankets, legs tangled, bodies warm, and he thought that he could love her. If he wanted to, he could love her, but he wouldn't, for her sake. But if he wanted to, he could. He knew he could.

At the gardens, he kissed her goodbye because that seemed like the right thing to do. Tommy would be angry that he’d been so late, but he didn’t care. And he knew better than to think that he and Tess had reached anything other than a stalemate, but maybe she would mistake this morning for a success. Either way, he doubted that they would fight tonight. That was something.

* * *

After three nights without a fight, they woke not to her alarm but to light, so much light. Tess nudged the clock, then craned her neck to look at the socket.

“Power’s out,” she gave as she settled back into bed, “and no one’s come knocking. I’m not getting up.”

And Joel didn’t want to get up either, especially given that, in an hour or so, someone would probably come to their front door and ask for help with the hydroelectric power, gruntwork more than anything else. If there were a siege at the border, alarms would’ve rung out by now, but no, this was a normal problem. In a world of abnormal struggles, a power outage was a normal problem. They would need to have bread and canned peaches for breakfast so that the fridge stayed cool. Instead of the television, they would crack books, or he would sit in the workshop upstairs and whittle, or she would go to the gardens and try to figure out if the plants needed assistance. They weren’t going to freeze to death, nor would they struggle to stay warm. And Tess had her back to him, and he figured she wanted him to do something about that, so he scooted toward her in bed, his arm coming over her stomach, his lips against her hair. This was natural. They could make today work. A power outage, and eventually, they would get up when someone knocked on their front door, and she sighed against him, so comfortable. At least she was comfortable. With light coming in through the windows, he figured it must be eight, maybe nine in the morning, well past first light, they’d missed their assigned patrols and were slacking off in bed. He wasn’t comfortable because he didn’t know why they’d been able to sleep in, and he didn’t understand how Tess could be so relaxed when the same question must’ve been on her mind.

But he didn’t need to be comfortable; he just needed to act as if he was, and then, she would keep quiet all day, and they would have a civil dinner tonight, sitting across from each other with grace and poise, and tomorrow would be the same. Days upon days of the exact same, a routine, something so painfully predictable. He wanted predictable. He wanted to be on autopilot. He wanted his mind empty, and his life uncomplicated, and no questions asked, not by Tess, not by himself, not by anyone. So, he would hold her in bed and pretend he was thinking about her - run his fingers through her hair, that would be convincing - instead of thinking about where Tommy was, who Maria had round up to go to the dam, why Tess and Joel hadn’t made that list. Sure, their house was far from the gates, but Joel and Tess had been on the crew for almost every other power outage. He leaned forward, kissed where her jaw and neck met. The last time, he and Tess had been there all night, no sleep, and come dawn, they both found a control room and set out one tiny bedroll there, and she put a sock on the door because she didn’t want any interruptions. No, she wanted to _sleep_ , and the power was on, and the building hummed beneath them, falling water, and she fell asleep so easily, and he was right behind her, exhausted from the night, thankful that, when they returned home, he would be able to turn on the lights again. There was something so powerful about being able to flick a switch and suddenly have light.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something,” Tess said, airy morning voice, half-awake.

He hummed in response, his fingers trailing her bicep, her shirt with a hole at the underarm, her body as familiar to him as his own. He really could love her, if he needed to.

“I know that this isn’t an easy topic for you,” she said, and he could feel her tensing against him, a confusing kind of tension. She didn’t mean to be combative; no, this was different from their dinnertime fights, so either she had found a new tactic, or she was talking about something else.

He could distract her. Then he wouldn’t need to know which.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” he said, then trailed his fingers down her side, pressing up against her, slipping his hand beneath the waistband of her pants.

Thankfully, she didn’t jerk away. He could make this work. After all, this was one of her signature moves, sex instead of talking, so he might as well try it out. And at first, he felt confident, he could do this, and then, they would need to go to the power plant, and she would be wispy and confident, her morning starting off right, and to everyone around them, they would look like a normal couple. And everything about them was normal, a kind of normal that was rare in this world, so they had no need to talk about complicated things. They could keep their secrets to themselves, and still, they would have a warm bed to sleep in at night, and they would be well-fed, and they would be warm. Shelter, warmth, food, and water, those were all they needed, and they had plenty of each, so why disrupt their lives?

His fingers were sticky. Had she already been aroused? No, she hadn’t been, and when he pulled his hand away, they both looked up to find his fingers streaked with blood.

“Oh, thank God,” Tess said, and she was up and out of bed before he could apologize, the red stain bright on her pants. At least one of them should’ve expected a stain. He wondered if they ought to look for black sheets, maybe navy, for her periods began like this more often than not. 

Lying back, he watched as she went into their drawers in the closet, brought new clothes into the bathroom. Though she closed the door, he could still hear water running, cloth sandwiched between her hands and rubbed, trying to get stains out, and she mumbled something, a kind of mantra. Looking down at his fingers, he figured he ought to get up, go downstairs and wash his hands, maybe start on some breakfast, but instead, he stared at his fingers, her blood on his fingers. He couldn’t help but associate that blood with pain. Yes, he’d stabbed her, brought a knife to the pale skin of her stomach and sliced, hot blood spilling from her guts. He'd done this to her. And he was being ridiculous, he was absolutely being ridiculous, and they’d seen each other’s blood plenty of times beforehand, Tess’s wounds dripping after a bad trade deal, a slash on his calf, rips in jeans, eyes swelling and bruised. But he’d never been the one to hurt her, not until now.

She left the bathroom, tearing him from his thoughts. To his surprise, she wore jeans, half-dressed for the day, ready to head out.

“We should go up to the plant,” she said, nodding quickly, then heading into the closet again for a shirt.

No, he needed to soak their sheets, and because no one had come looking for them, they likely weren’t needed at the plant. And why weren’t they needed at the plant? He wondered where Tommy was, what tasks Maria had assigned, and he wondered if Tess remembered how they slept in one of the rooms in the plant, exhausted after a long night, many of the people in the town not knowing that the power had been gone because it came back before everyone woke up. 

Then, the alarm clock sputtered to life, the bathroom lights coming on. Out of habit, Tess must’ve flicked the switch when she closed the door. If they looked out their windows, they would see as the power started to creep up on the town, light starting at one end of the settlement and moving as if by osmosis.

“Guess not,” Tess said, and they looked at each other and didn’t know what to do.


	17. Salt (Part 2)

In the gardens, Tess knelt before a bed, closed her eyes, and breathed slowly, hoping the cramps would pass. Though part of her thought these were worse than usual, another part insisted that she was just being dramatic. Maria had been right, but Tess wouldn’t say anything, not yet, didn’t want to give Maria that kind of vindication. And she still hated that Maria hadn’t met her where she was, had dismissed her and told her to wait, and in a certain way, she hated even more that Maria had been right. 

“You alright?” 

Shaken from her thoughts, Tess looked up, and there was Cat, the left side of her head shaved, vinelike tattoos climbing up her arms. She held the starts of some garlic and onions, the produce they’d intended to plant in this line here. Because Cat and the other teenagers tended to be the ones who weeded the garlic, Tess liked letting them be the ones to plant it too, giving them a sort of incentive for actually doing a good job, but then again, all she needed to do in order to make Cat work was offer a Green Day CD and few distractions. 

“Yeah,” Tess gave, standing up. 

“Time of the month?”

Tess shook her head.

“Blood infection,” she gave. “Really serious. I’ll be dead before the end of the week.”

“Cool,” Cat deadpanned, then knelt before the bed, started her work. “My mom will miss your deliveries, though.”

Of all the women in town - especially now that Maria had shown her true colors - Tess might’ve liked Cat’s mother the best. Kaya, the ex-pilot, oftentimes worked with the power or electrical wiring, and because she, like the doctors and nurses from the old times, had been deemed particularly important to the settlement, she had her groceries delivered. Kaya was only a few years older than Tess, occupying a certain niche that no one else in the settlement seemed to, someone old enough to understand the world but young enough to be naive come the outbreak, so sometimes, Tess would stay to chat, making sure the blue house Kaya and Cat lived in was the last on the delivery route. It was nice to talk to someone else who understood.

She liked the blue house too, a robin’s egg color on a street of beige homes, the paint cracking and peeling but the color visible nonetheless. And the place was big too, much too big for two people alone.

“Is it just you and your mom in that house?” Tess asked, hands on her hips, watching Cat plant the bulbs.

Shaking her head, Cat said, “Eugene’s there too, and Victor was until last month.”

“Victor, really?” Tess asked. “Some kind of spat?”

“Found a house with his girlfriend. I think they want kids.”

“Oh,” Tess said. Why had she assumed a fight? “Makes sense.”

“You heard from her at all?”

“Your mother?”

“No.”

Their eyes met, and then, Tess understood.

“No, I haven’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Not a word.”

“Glad it’s not just me, then.”

Finishing up with the bulbs, Cat dusted the soil off of her hands, stood alongside Tess. At least they would have summer produce soon enough, even if the days felt more like winter than like spring. And then, Tess would chop lettuce in the kitchen, and Joel would come home from installing new pipes in the community center, and he would bring in fresh, hot brisket, and they would eat salad first because they needed to stay healthy. Jackson meant health for them. Jackson meant that she got her period at the same time each month, and if the nights stayed cloudless, she could even track her cycle based on the phases of the moon. Phases of the moon. Why would anyone assume a man had made the Gregorian calendar? And back in the QZ, her periods had been infrequent enough that, save for the times when cramps forced her down, she usually assumed that the stain on her jeans had come from a flesh wound. She used government-issue washable pads that were stained brown and scratchy like old sweaters, and she dealt with it. A couple of times, she’d expected it to come when it didn’t, but in the QZ, no one thought nine months ahead. Either a parasite her immune system had been forced to ignore would kill her, or she would die in a shootout, or she would freeze to death when the electric heating failed, so why not just ignore a missed period? Back when she lived in an all-women’s bunkhouse, someone two beds over had snuck to the Outsides seeking a plant that, if consumed in certain ways, could facilitate an abortion, and that woman never came back, the bed staying open for two weeks and then a new roommate looking uncomfortable as she put sheets on the bunk, as she looked around at the other women and wondered why this place now had room. 

Tess shouldn’t have gone to Maria. There was a difference between being in the mayor’s extended family and being friends with Maria, and she knew how Maria felt about children. Really, it had been Tess’s mistake all along, but still, fuck Maria. Fuck Maria. _When someone comes to you scared like that,_ Tess thought, _you don’t tell them to just wait it out._ And, in the end, Maria had made the right call, and Tess got her period. Two weeks late, yes, but this was a period nonetheless, even if it happened to be a heavier, more painful one than usual. And the breast pain could be explained by changes in her progesterone level, the same changes that happened every month with her period, and she should’ve known better than to think that mild nausea was morning sickness, and her emotional instability correlated strongly to Joel being an asshole. So, why had she assumed anyway? Maria’s words echoed in her mind, _could this just be wishful thinking?_ But it hadn’t been wishful thinking, not at all; instead, she’d been terrified, both at the prospect of being forced into a life she absolutely didn’t want and at the thought of how Joel would react, for Joel wouldn’t react well. No, Joel would shut down even more, and she would be alone, scared and alone, and she didn’t know what would be left for her then, for the last woman she’d seen reach that point had gone to the Outsides and never come back. And Tess knew she would do the same if she needed to. She could picture herself going beyond the gates in Jackson and searching for medicinal plants, then never coming back.

But it hadn’t been true, thank goodness. Thank goodness. In the bathroom that morning, she’d almost started crying, overcome with thankfulness, her body still her own, her life still under her control. And thank goodness he’d tried to finger her instead of having a real conversation, piece of shit. Had she been broaching any other topic, she would’ve batted his hand away, but she hadn’t wanted to tell him, and if he didn’t want to know, then she could keep quiet. She knew that he didn’t want to talk. She knew he acted as if he felt better than he actually did. But that morning, he’d held her in bed, not forcing them both up, not insisting on going to the dam, and he must’ve assumed they were needed there, for he hadn’t been with her when Maria had told her to take it easy, no changes in routine, no hard work. In bed, he held her, and he didn’t seem as if he wanted to be somewhere else, and the house was cold enough that his body felt infinitely warm, making her instinctively pull him closer. For a moment, she felt as if he might understand, as if he could handle hearing what had been on her mind, but then, he put his hand down her pants, and she knew it was a facade, and she wondered why she expected anything else. She wondered how he could’ve changed since she’d spoken to Maria, for Joel was far too stubborn to change. And she felt like a fool until he pulled his fingers back and showed her blood. Not the fool, not today. Maybe an ashamed and naive woman, but not a fool.

“You’ve got something,” Cat said, nodding toward Tess’s back. 

Looking back, Tess could see a stain on her jeans, and this time, she knew her skin had remained intact. Not a flesh wound. She sighed, not wanting to put the effort into changing. Usually, her new pads from the settlement, unlike the shitty ones from the QZ, didn’t leak. She hated being taken by surprise.

“Thanks,” Tess said, then looked toward the house she shared with Joel, the place seeming to form eyes from its windows and stare her down. 

She didn’t want to go home, not even for a few minutes. She didn’t want to go home at all.

* * *

She’d been different that morning. Joel knew she had. And he fixed sinks while thinking through her every action, the power outage, no alarm tone, no one coming to get them. According to Tommy, Maria hadn’t gone to wake Joel and Tess because they weren’t needed, but why hadn’t they been needed? Tommy didn’t know why, that was Maria’s call, not his, but still, Tommy had to know something, right? It couldn’t be a coincidence that Tess acted weird on a morning that was out of the norm. What did Tess know? What had she wanted to talk to him about? This time, he actually wanted to know, for she’d tensed up, had spoken so carefully. If she’d wanted to talk about Ellie and Salt Lake City, then she wouldn’t have tiptoed around the topic, would’ve outright said she wanted to know what had happened, had done exactly that plenty of times before. Something was different, and had he not tried to have sex with her - he still couldn’t decide whether or not that had been a bad idea, for nothing had changed because of his actions - she would’ve told him something, maybe something important. And against his better judgment, he wanted to know what she’d meant to say.

For dinner, they roasted potatoes, cracked a can of corn relish, finished off the pickled carrots. Spring meals tended to be sparse, and as they ate, she promised that there were blooms in the greenhouses, that sprouts had popped up in the beds, the earth warmer than one would think, the frosts thankfully sparse. And soon enough, maybe in June, she would bring home the first of the strawberries, and they would sit on the porch and eat them together, the sun staying up past seven in the evening, no need to wear jackets or warm boots anymore, and everything would be easier. She didn’t add that last part, but he looked up at her, dark lashes, the mole below her eye, her hair longer than he’d ever seen it before, and she held her fork more daintily than she should’ve, and it wasn’t like her to apologize for the state of dinner, but he could sense that she wanted something more. He felt how she longed for top sirloin and sweet potatoes and cinnamon, coriander, fresh basil, sprigs of mint she would chew while pruning in the greenhouses. She wanted something fresh. She wanted what she’d been promised all winter, the hope she’d held through the long, dark nights. And she wanted to bring that hope home with her, then feed it to him as well, for such things were best when shared. But he wasn’t very good at sharing.

She was talking about beehives and honey and pollination when he decided he truly wanted to know.

“What did you want to talk about this morning?” he asked. “Before we were...interrupted.”

She furrowed her brow, shook her head.

“Don’t remember,” she gave.

He didn’t have the patience to figure out if she was lying.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “It sounded important.”

Shrugging, she said, “Guess it wasn’t.”

“You weren’t acting like it wasn’t.”

“Joel,” she said, sounding tired, shaking her head. “Whatever it was, it’s not important. Let’s talk about something else.”

Alright, fine, he picked up his fork and knife again, but he wasn’t hungry, and he’d spent all day trying to figure out what she’d meant to talk about. At this point, he didn’t want to know anymore; he _needed_ to know.

“You’re being unreasonable,” he said, and she stilled before him, and he knew what would come next.

“Unreasonable,” she said, nodding to herself, standing up, her palm coming to her forehead. She walked aimlessly away from him, needed to channel the emotions into movement, not wanting to look at him, and he could sense changes in her, gears shifting, new clarity. 

And he would let her go. She paused in the kitchen doorway, her back to him, different pants than the ones she’d been wearing this morning. Why had she changed? Maybe she’d been too cold. And the house around them was cold, but he didn’t want to start a fire. She shook her head, then headed toward the living room, and though he wondered if she wanted him to follow her, he wasn’t going to follow. No, he would finish his dinner, and later, they would go to bed together, and they wouldn’t talk about anything. Nothing had changed, at least nothing major. Eventually, she would calm down and apologize to him. Everything was fine. 

He heard her sigh, boards creaking in the living room. She picked something up, maybe a book, and maybe she wanted to throw a book at him, and maybe they would break windows. No, _she_ would break windows, and she would be the one to pick up the glass in their living room, for this had been all her fault, her own doing. And yeah, he wanted to follow her, wanted to have books thrown at him, wanted to see her so angry that she would finally admit to what had been on her mind, and she would see that she was, in fact, being unreasonable, and that he was correct, and that she ought to stop pestering him. It would be nice to go to work bruised tomorrow. It would be nice for her to have a physical reminder of what she’d done to him.

But when he came into the living room, she wasn’t holding a book. Instead, she had their one framed wedding picture in both of her hands, and her arms were above her head, and with force, she smashed the frame, glass spreading around her feet, splintering wood, the picture forced in half, a crease down the center. Looking down, he saw the bitter irony: they’d both been pictured in the rightmost side of the photograph, so the crease hadn’t separated them at all.

“You’re an asshole,” she said, carefully stepping over the glass, heading toward the front door, but he caught her wrist before she could leave.

When she looked up at him, he didn’t know what to say, but she expected him to say something, so he tried to think of an adequate response. But what could he say? The broken glass shimmered in the half-light of the evening, sunset beyond their windows. She hadn’t wanted rings. She hadn’t even wanted other pictures developed, but she’d wanted that one. They’d both wanted that one. And he didn’t want to call it shellshock, but he was stuck on the picture. He didn’t know what he could say to her now. He didn’t know how he could say something louder than what she had said by breaking that picture.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” he said, but she shook her head. No, he won’t.

“I ask you to tell me what happened in Salt Lake City, and you refuse,” she said, not believing him. “I ask you how you’re feeling now that Ellie won’t speak to either of us, and you tell me I’m crossing a line. And I’ve tried to give you space. I know you, Joel, and I’ve tried not to challenge you, but it feels like I’m the one making all the effort here. And all the while, you think that forcing something out of me would make us equal.”

She shook her head, looking away from him, and he realized that she was holding back tears.

“I’m sick of it, Joel,” she said, and though he expected her to sound angry, instead she sounded tired, almost wounded. She just wanted this to stop. “I’m sick and tired of having to pretend everything’s alright, or acting as if I’m the bad guy because I asked you a basic fucking question. And you don’t tell me anything. Tommy and Maria, you told them, but you’ve told me absolutely nothing, Joel, and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know where we’re supposed to go from here. I can’t tell you anything. And it’s just going to get worse, even though right now it feels pretty fucking dismal. I’m sick of it, Joel, really sick of it.”

Sighing, she pulled away from him, but his fingers were still wrapped around her wrist.

“Please,” she said, defeated. “Let me go. I need some air.”

So he relaxed his fingers, and she pulled away from him, headed for the door. She didn’t bother lacing her boots. Though he couldn’t think of where she would go, she seemed as if she had a location in mind. She didn’t look at him as she shut the door.

* * *

He sat on the couch and stared at the broken glass for a long time before he decided that he needed some air too.

At this time of the evening, the settlement started to go dark, and he could walk the perimeter, half-aimless, half-searching. He didn’t see her, so maybe she’d gone inside somewhere. Tommy and Maria’s? But he went by their house and looked in through the windows, and the two of them were eating dinner together, and Tommy said something that made Maria laugh, and Maria nudged him across the table, _stop that._ Though he thought about knocking and asking, instead he stood there for longer than he should’ve, and he watched the two of them together, so relaxed, nothing wrong, everything in its proper place. He didn’t want to disrupt something good, something right. He didn’t want to bring his own pain into their home.

For once, he wanted to talk to someone, but the only person he could talk to was Tess, even though he rarely talked to her, at least not about the deeper stuff. And he wanted someone else to agree with him as he paced the town, wanted someone else to say yes, she was being unreasonable, she was being an asshole, and she kept pestering him, and she ought to know better. She ought to know him better than she did, but she didn’t, and she insisted that she know about Salt Lake City, about Ellie, and really, what was there to tell? He’d told Ellie exactly what he’d told Tess, the only difference being the years since the event, and Ellie had said that they were through. If he told Tess all of that, she would probably assume he’d omitted something, but that was the truth, the bland, dreadful truth, a whimper rather than a bang, the inevitable reaching him right when he knew it would. A note about where Ellie had gone, and he hadn’t woken Tess because she’d still felt feverish, and maybe he should’ve woken her up. Maybe, had Tess joined him, Salt Lake City would’ve been easier. Which time? Both times, for she would’ve killed the guards long before he did, and she wouldn’t have let those bastards touch her. And she wouldn’t have doubted the decision, for her fate matched Ellie’s, the deaths of the few for the benefits of the many, and she wasn’t an optimist. When they were in the orchard together on their first full day in Jackson, he’d thought she would hate him for his decisions, her dying wish going unfulfilled, but no, she’d reached out for him and held him, the two of them beneath blooming trees, this was summer, a chance to start over, a chance to grow, and she would’ve done the same. She would’ve done the same. And she didn’t hate him, not even a little. No matter who he’d killed, she didn’t hate him, for she would’ve done worse.

But she hated him now. Though he still thought she was being unreasonable, in some ways he understood, for he’d been pretending, and she hadn’t known how to respond. And maybe, in the end, she hadn’t been asking for much. Maybe she’d been asking for what they’d both asked of each other all along. The firetower, their brief and aimless vacation, he’d wanted more back then, so much more, and she had been hesitant, so he’d pushed, and she’d gotten angry. It felt uncomfortably familiar now, thinking about how she pushed him away, walls up after they were ambushed, wanting him to keep quiet. But she’d let him in. Eventually, she’d let him in, and maybe she assumed he would do the same, so long as she pushed enough. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t, for she'd been asking about Ellie, and he didn’t want to talk about Ellie. The last time he’d seen Ellie, she’d been on group patrols, and she’d been far enough away that she might not have noticed him but close enough to need to avoid him on purpose, and he didn’t think he should ask. He didn’t think he should insert himself, but he wanted to, wanted so badly to say hello, ask her how she was doing, maybe apologize, and what for? He didn’t know what to apologize for because he didn’t regret what he’d done. Though he’d wondered if he ought to regret what he’d done, he could remember Tess’s words on that first full day in Jackson, how she insisted that she would’ve done the same. _Had it been me,_ she’d asked, _would you have let me die?_ And though that would’ve been different, so different, he shook his head nonetheless, for he would’ve killed his way through those halls for her too. So he didn’t regret it, not even a little bit. He didn’t know how to apologize for something he didn’t regret.

But, against his better judgment, he wanted to apologize to Tess, for she hadn’t meant to hurt him, and in turn, he’d hurt her instead. Though she’d been the one to pick fights, he’d been the first one to yell, and she hadn’t been unreasonable. He’d been wrong. All along, she’d asked him for the truth, the same truth he’d told Tommy and Maria, and he’d held back out of fear, just fear. His fear of hurting her had only caused her harm. His fear of showing her how he felt had only hurt him in return.

And what the hell was he doing? Walking aimlessly through the town, and back home, there was glass all over his floor, and he figured Tess would want him on the couch tonight, so he ought to clean it up. And though he feared the outcome, he ought to apologize, for she hadn’t been unreasonable. He had been the one to stop her this morning. He had been the one refusing to tell her about Salt Lake City. And as he repeated those statements in his mind, he felt himself tense and cringe, an uncomfortable, hot feeling in his muscles, the shame of being the one in the wrong. If she shut down after all he’d put her through, then only an idiot wouldn’t understand why. She’d wanted to talk, but after enough attempts, she couldn’t be bothered to try again. After all, she would never get a different reaction out of him. They both were too stubborn to think that something else would happen next time.

He needed to go home. He needed to apologize. And the world around him started to blur, and people said hi to him, but he walked past them, families out late, couples going for walks, the town closing up for the evening, and he needed to get home. He needed to get home. He’d hurt her. Why had he hurt her? Because he’d assumed that that hurt would be less than whatever would come to her if he did something different. No, this was worse. Watching her break glass, how close to tears she’d been, that was worse. He was wrong. He wasn’t protecting her. Instead, he protected himself, then pretended he had been protecting her the whole time, keeping her from getting hurt. And he’d hurt her. All those nights they’d spent fighting, and she’d just wanted an explanation, something so similar to what he’d given her in the orchard on his first real day in Jackson, the two of them beneath the trees, the mountains above making them feel so small and inconsequential. And the two of them didn’t matter in this world, not even a little bit, and they’d inflicted so much pain, had killed so many people, but they could do better. They could both do better. And Tess had done better, but Joel had lagged behind her, the best he could offer being half-assed cuddling and insisting everything was alright. He’d let her down. In trying so hard never to hurt her, all he’d done was hurt her. And he needed to apologize.

But when he returned to the house, the place felt eerily quiet, as if the place had been abandoned years ago. The lights were still on, broken glass still all over the living room floor. On the kitchen table, their plates remained, forks and knives set down as if they’d meant to keep eating. Upstairs, he would find their clothes together in the closet, jackets side by side, and he would see the alarm clock Tess always set, and two toothbrushes by the bathroom sink, and a book on her bedside table. Nothing had changed, but the place felt emptier, absent, a car buried in a ditch during a snowstorm, silent and wrong. He wanted to call out for her, but he could tell that she wasn’t here anymore.

First, check upstairs. Maybe she went to bed. Maybe he was wrong. And when he turned on the bedroom lights, everything looked the same, clothes in the closet, alarm clock set, toothbrushes by the sink, but her pillow was gone. So, she wasn’t staying here tonight, but given the disarray in the living room, that made sense. Maybe she’d gone to the community center, taking up one of the beds in the typically empty infirmary, or maybe she’d been in Tommy and Maria’s guest room this whole time, lights off, not sharing dinner with them. But she would return tomorrow. They would talk about what had happened, and then, he would apologize. And he really would tell her whatever she wanted to know. He would detail every last word he and Ellie had exchanged in Salt Lake City, for he’d relived that conversation hundreds of times, picking apart every sentence, trying to figure out how he could’ve kept her. And he would apologize. He would apologize for every last fight, for how much he’d yelled, for acting robotic and stilted and unnatural, for being absent. And everything would be okay.

Though it felt strange to go to sleep without her pillow next to his, he tried not to dwell. He tried not to look at the alarm clock he could only describe as being hers. He tried not to think about how she’d taken the book she was currently reading off of her bedside table. He tried not to think about how things could go wrong.

* * *

In the morning, he woke up alone to the sound of her alarm. He could only ever find the snooze. Downstairs, glass littered the floor, the picture still creased in that one spot. When he made it to the barn, he didn’t see Tess, then joined Tommy for the valley route, not wanting to ask where Tess was, why she hadn’t shown up for her own route.

He returned home for his toolbelt, same routine as always, and though he didn’t need anything from upstairs, he went up there anyway and found the closet half-empty, pulled open empty drawers, no shirts, no mittens, not even one of her headbands. At some point, she’d come back, and she’d taken everything with her. 

Picking up his toolbelt, he headed out for the day, and he didn’t think about looking for her.


	18. Radio Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so. this is technically a real radio station. for some reason i googled "jackson wyoming radio stations" instead of, you know, "available radio call signs" or something. this was a mistake. anyway this is not associated with that radio station, nor do i have absolutely any idea what that station plays, so for the purposes of This Right Here, please ignore the tomfoolery. thank u

Joel hadn’t participated in the project, but he knew enough about the group of radio enthusiasts to understand that getting the first song on air took more effort than it should’ve. Reconnecting the antenna, hooking wires to the board, installing microphones, hauling records, getting Maria sign off on an unorthodox use of town power, the crew had worked day and night to start the music, so on the first night of broadcast, Joel sat in the armchair in the living room, his radio tuned to the right station, dead air, the same dead air as always. He hadn’t heard the radio since 2013. He hadn’t heard the radio since he’d been driving Sarah home from soccer practice. He’d like the country station out of Austin, but Sarah always wanted to put on the top 40, and sometimes, he would switch back to annoy her, but eventually, he would give in, let whatever Justin Bieber she liked this week play during their drive home. 

He missed highways. He missed hearing the same voices during his morning and night commutes. Hell, he even missed the advertisements, the jingles still stuck in his head, and should he ever need to redo his roof or find a new dentist in Austin, he knew where to go. Though he couldn’t remember what he’d had for dinner two nights ago, he could still remember those jingles, the call signs of his favorite stations, the jumbled sounds of scanning on the highway. And like everyone else in the settlement, he sat by whatever radio he could manage, and he listened for something to change. Sure, other people were huddled with family, but he could enjoy this alone. He could enjoy a lot of things alone.

And when he heard static, such a familiar sound, a sound that took him back to being a child, to being a father, to being in his truck and driving, just driving, driving anywhere, he smiled, breathless, that sound, that same sound. Needle touching vinyl, microphone clicking, he knew those sounds, and a voice. A voice over the airwaves, and not a voice talking in code, not a voice telling him about safety and hordes, not another settlement. No, this was a voice for entertainment. This was a voice who wanted to talk, and whoever was on air had heard radio shows plenty of times in their life, knew the right lilts, the signature voice-acting, and this station had a call sign. A call sign. Had they decided to use one of the local call signs, back from the old times? KJAX, pronounced _kay-jax,_ broadcasting on 93.5 megahertz, and the broadcaster didn’t know if this had been done before - well, if _done before_ meant _done since this stopped being normal_ \- but in the end, who cared? He would consider this to be the first entertainment broadcast of this awful new age, taking back the airwaves, and maybe they would be intercepted, or maybe another settlement would miraculously pick up this station, or maybe wanderers passing through the state would accidentally tune in and find old songs playing, songs from the good times, songs about the good times. And what would they play as the first song of this new age? With the first few notes, Joel recognized the song, smiled to himself while he looked out the living room windows, the floor alongside him still covered in glass, splintering wood. If he wanted to walk around the living room, he needed to wear shoes, but once he was in the armchair, he could pull off his boots, tune the radio, and listen. And now, Elton John for the new age. _She packed my bags last night, pre-flight. Zero hours, nine am. And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then._

Across town, Tess braided Kaya’s long, dark hair, two French braids. The blue house had a plush leather couch in the living room, and windowseats lined with plants. In the corner of the room, Eugene sat in a degraded recliner, and Cat leaned against the couch, knees up, sketchbook balanced on her lap. Of course, Cat didn’t care about the music, but as Tess sat on the couch with Kaya, the other woman’s back turned to her, she smiled. The last time she’d heard music like this, she’d been in her brother’s truck, or maybe her dad’s, or maybe she’d been working the front desk at her dad’s shop, and she hadn’t chosen the station, and she tried to find a way to be cool with that. Her brothers always turned up Bruce Springsteen, windows down, no air conditioning in their old-as-shit truck, and she would fly her hand out the window, catching the breeze as they drove.

When Tess looked down, she caught Cat drawing irises, almost photorealistic, colorless but accurate, a field guide drawing, and Eugene closed his eyes, a slight smile on his lips, going back to another place, another time. Kaya said that the radio stations in Alaska had been sparse - most people don’t realize how big Alaska is, larger than Texas, no joke - so sometimes she drove with silence, and her husband had thought that that was strange, being able to drive without music, being able to drive in silence, but then again, if you scanned through and found nothing, what else would you listen to? But he bought her CDs to keep in the car, even when he was deployed. She wouldn’t need to drive in silence anymore.

In their own home, Tommy and Maria sat on their own living room couch, Maria’s glasses on and covered in fingerprints, and she flipped through last month’s logs, the food stores, the current residents, any reports of illness, but Tommy nudged her, shook his head. She could work on that later. And why now? He took her hand, then pulled her toward the center of the living room, braided carpet, creaking boards, and their radio prattled on from its seat on their bookshelf, and his left hand came to the small of her back, his right entwining with her left. And she gave him a look, _this is ridiculous,_ but she leaned into him anyway, and they barely even danced at the biannual dances, needed a couple drinks in them before they did so at Joel and Tess’s wedding, hadn’t even done so at their own. But Tommy thought that tonight was special, and as was typical with things rooted in emotions rather than logic, Maria took his word for it. And when he stepped on her toes, she laughed.

Ellie sat in the garage. She hadn’t heard this song before. She wondered what year it had been from. The one tape she’d stolen from Bill, Joel had said that that was before his time, but was this before his time? Though she knew the day and month of his birthday, she didn’t actually know his age, so even if she knew when this song came out, she wouldn’t know what phase of life he’d been in at the time, if he’d been alive at all. But she liked the piano music. Dina knew how to play the piano, but all the pianos in town were out of tune. Dina had made a joke about it. _You can tune a piano, but you can’t tune a fish. Get it? Like tuna fish. Oh, that was funny, you’re just being a spoilsport._

With the last few lines of the song playing, Joel wondered how the time had passed. What time? The few minutes of this song, or the last twenty years? More than that now, but twenty was a good, solid number. Where had it all gone? For so long, he’d been outrunning his own inevitable death, but now, that death felt far away, staved off for the moment. He’d spent his years with Tommy, and then in Boston, and then with Tess, and then without Tommy. And now, Jackson, and he sat alone in his home. He was alone now. Two weeks ago, Tess had covered their floor in glass, then left and gone to stay somewhere else. A couple days later, Maria came knocking, wished to inform him - as if he hadn’t already known - that Tess had taken up residence in the blue house across town. Did he know which one she meant? Yes, he did, the blue house, you couldn’t miss it. And Maria asked him what had happened, then looked over his shoulder and saw the glass, nodded in understanding, and left without another word.

The broadcaster said that they would be back tomorrow with more music, nine in the morning to six at night, maybe later if volunteers wanted to keep playing. Until then, keep your radio tuned to KJAX 93.5, and keep on rocking.

* * *

“Listen,” Kaya said, half-sweaty in the bar, flushed from the alcohol, “it wasn’t your fault, and he’s an ass. Case closed. Done-zo. Over.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tess said, the more sober of the two, legs crossed. Over the bar’s speakers, KJAX played, and whoever volunteered to broadcast at night was, for lack of a better term, a dipshit. They were playing Madonna, and Tess really didn’t like Madonna.

“Oh, stop it,” Kaya clinked their glasses, “you need to stick up for yourself. Fuck men.”

Tess laughed.

“Yeah, fuck men.”

“Fuck men!” 

Kaya tipped back her whiskey, then tapped the glass on the bar twice, asking for more. Around them, cigar smoke hung in the air, a thick haze surrounding the two women. When the doors opened, cool half-summer air came in through the doors, a momentary respite, but in a way, the heat of other bodies made the night better. Tess had come here to feel the kind of comfortable that whiskey made her, pleasantly warm on the inside, slow and steady. If she’d wanted level-headed comfort, she would’ve stayed home, and purposefully not put on the radio.

“And fuck Maria, too,” Kaya added, shaking her head. Tonight, she had her hair half-up, and Tess wondered how she could handle having hair that long, all the way down her back, shiny and soft but so, _so_ long. Tess hadn’t cut hers since March, and with it just past her shoulders, she felt suffocated. “It’s one thing to be a heartless bureaucrat as a mayor, but another thing to be a heartless bureaucrat to a _friend._ ”

Glancing around the restaurant, Tess tried to gauge if anyone had heard, but instead, everyone drank beers, chatted, tapped their feet along to “Material Girl.”

“Don’t talk so loud,” Tess said, embarrassed. “Someone’s gonna get the wrong idea.”

“Like what?” Kaya asked, feigning innocence. “Like she didn’t screw you over? Speak your _truth._ ”

“I’ll speak my truth,” Tess gave as their glasses were refilled, “except quieter, and typically behind her back.”

Kaya smiled, then picked up her glass, swirled the whiskey around.

“You’re funny,” Kaya said, poking Tess’s sternum. “I like you.”

Tess sighed.

“And you’re drunk,” she said, and whoever had control of KJAX put on “Y.M.C.A.,” so Tess huffed, picked up her drink, winced before shooting it. At this point of the night, whiskey started to burn her throat, no tolerance, and she couldn’t handle the chorus of this song right now, so she took Kaya’s hand, pulled the woman out of the bar. Kaya still wore her wedding band even though her husband had died before she’d come to this settlement.

And Kaya asked where they were going - outside, the settlement was dark, the grocery store closed, the town quiet for the evening - and Tess said that they were going home, and because everyone listened to KJAX now, the Village People echoed throughout the settlement as Tess tugged Kaya along, the two of them half-stumbling, one woman more drunk than the other. They didn’t live close to here. Maybe they should’ve planned this better. Around town, people had opened the windows in their homes, so the radio sounds waxed and waned as they passed, and Kaya said she needed to throw up, so Tess angled her toward an innocuous spot, but no, it passed, how about a piggyback? And Tess said that she’d broken some ribs last year, and Kaya said she didn’t care, she wanted a piggyback, so Tess sighed, crouched down, and Kaya hopped up, arms wrapping around Tess’s neck, legs holding on for dear life. At least Tess had been lifting heavier recently. Between the alcohol, the spare weight, the darkness around town, and the Village People, she wouldn’t have gotten home otherwise. 

The blue house had four steps up to the front door. Fuck.

“I have to let you down,” Tess said.

And Kaya’s breath was warm against Tess’s neck as she said, “You’ll never let me down.”

“No,” Tess said, and why was she shivering? “I mean I have to set you down. I can’t carry you up the steps.”

“Fine,” Kaya gave, letting go, standing on her own two feet. “But thanks for the ride.”

“Anytime,” Tess said, but her ribs hurt, so if asked again, she would just claim that she’d broken ribs last week, then hope that Kaya was drunk enough to believe her.

They headed inside, Tess guiding Kaya through the living room and up the staircase, toward the four bedrooms in this house. By now, Eugene must have gone to bed, but Cat’s light was on. Once Tess knew that Kaya was in her bedroom, door closed, not coming out until morning, Tess ducked into the hallway, then knocked on Cat’s door, waited until Cat said _come in_ before opening up.

Though Cat kept her room spotless, she’d covered her walls floor to ceiling in drawings, some of her own, some of Ellie’s, the floral wallpaper hidden by sketchbook pages. She sat on her bed, done up with an uncharacteristically pink quilt, and drew more, her little portable radio set at the foot, KJAX broadcasting “Hip to be Square.” At this point, Tess wished radio would die again. 

“Hey,” Tess said, leaning against the door jamb, her half-drunkenness making the room spin but only a little, only enough to remind her that she wasn’t completely herself. “You’re up late.”

Momentarily, Cat looked up from her art, but she didn’t really care about having Tess in her doorway, so she quickly returned to her sketches.

“I don’t like going to bed before Mom gets home,” Cat gave. “And I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“Well, she’s home,” Tess said. “And the other excuse is dumb, and you know it.”

The irises from a couple of weeks ago, a drawing of Ellie, a portrait of the horses. One good gust from the window, and this room would fall apart, papers flying.

“She doesn’t really have friends,” Cat said, not looking up from her work. “I think people find her unapproachable. She’s happy you’re here, circumstances aside.”

Nodding, Tess bit her cheeks, tried to keep herself from blushing. When she came by that first night, Kaya had almost looked happy to see her, happy to give her a room for tonight. And when one night turned to two, Kaya started setting an extra place at the table, cooking an extra portion. Though Tess wondered if Kaya simply missed having Victor in the house, she felt nonetheless that her presence had been wanted in some way. At least she wasn’t imposing.

“You kind of creep me out when you stare at the pictures,” Cat said, so Tess stilled, not wanting to insult the girl. She thought the art was nice. She hadn’t meant to stare.

“You’re talented,” Tess said, for that was the truth.

“Did Ellie ever show you the one I drew of you guys?”

Tess furrowed her brow, shook her head, so Cat nodded toward the window, invited Tess over there, and on the wall here, there were pictures of people in town. So the room was organized by topic, then, flowers above the bed, people by the window, horses and other animals on the adjacent wall. She recognized Victor and his girlfriend, Eugene laughing in his worn-out recliner, Ellie, Ellie again, Ellie one more time. But toward the floor, just above where Cat kept her backpack, was a drawing that made Tess’s breath catch, her own likeness, a mirror image of a woman older than the one she’d expected to see. In her mind, her face had stayed permanently nineteen, so now, pictures took her by surprise. She was in her forties now, her face different, and across from her in the picture was Joel, a momentary capture of their wedding ceremony, something she hadn’t even known the term for when she first asked if he would be interested in a wedding. And the background - the lights, the church, Maria officiating - was a blur, just the two of them standing together, hands joined, almost old-fashioned. But this was the two of them. If she tried, she could almost remember Cat and Ellie in the front pews, Cat drawing the whole time, capturing the moment. Had Ellie asked her to do so? Oh, it hurt to think about back then, when things were so much easier.

“You should take that one,” Cat said, still not looking up from her work. “It’s you, after all.”

For a moment, Tess considered taking the picture, but no, she didn’t want to put this on her own wall. She didn’t want to look at this every day.

“That’s okay,” she gave, and now, she felt as if the walls were closing in on her. She needed to get out of this room. “Don’t stay up too late, alright?”

“Yeah,” Cat said, laughing the way her mother did, “sure.”

As Tess left the room, closed the door behind her, she heard the DJ sign off, KJAX going off air for the evening. Until tomorrow, keep your radio tuned to KJAX 93.5, and keep on rocking.

* * *

In the infirmary, Maria held pressure against Joel’s leg while he lay back on a cot, the bright lights above hurting his eyes. He could hear the sterilizer on the farthest counter clicking on, heating the needles inside, lowering the infection risk. Last year, one of the patrols had found the sterilizer in an old nail salon and brought the thing back, and suddenly, they were Maria’s championed residents of the settlement. Yes, a sterilizer, the difference between a dose of penicillin and saving medications, potentially the difference between life and death. Though Joel had never seen the thing used before, he’d heard Maria talk about it plenty of times. She didn’t even care that this had been intended for cosmetic purposes, not medical ones; what mattered was that she could use a sterilizer at all, no more boiling water, no more oven trays. And maybe Maria’s sterilizer would mean that he hadn’t completely fucked up his leg.

Tess would be so mad. At the edge of the room, Tommy finished up with the preparations, now heading out to find her, bring her here to stitch Joel up. Of course, Maria could stitch Joel up just fine, probably even better than Tess could, but no, this was Tess’s domain. So far, his scars had come from her, and he didn’t want someone else to mar his skin. And he trusted her. Back in a dirty apartment in the QZ, needle put through a candle flame, thread from an old shirt, he'd trusted her to keep him alive, and now was no different, sterilizer be damned. Sitting at the edge of his cot, Maria seemed unoffended, but he could tell that she wanted this to be over, no complications, just a long gash stitched up and no more blood lost, Joel sleeping off the day in the infirmary, back to normal duties tomorrow. Instead, Joel had insisted that Tess be the one to stitch him up, so Maria had to sit here and apply pressure, maybe even stitch him up in the end if Tess didn’t show. And though Maria didn’t seem angry, she nonetheless asked Tommy to put on the radio before he left, give them some entertainment.

93.5 megahertz, this radio had been intended for inter-settlement communication but now functioned for music alone, and the DJ had put on “Forever in Blue Jeans” while Joel’s own jeans sat in a crumpled heap on the ground, his legs bare save for his boxers, the deep gash on his thigh bleeding into the gauze Maria pressed down. Next time, he wouldn’t trip near sharp, exposed metal, but this time, he hadn’t known better. All the stupid things tended to kill in this world. When Tess had last been in this infirmary, she’d been close to death because a bullet graze had become infected, the gunshot a joke but the infection nearly fatal, and after years of dodging bullets, gaining scars, he’d felt cheated by having her demise come from an infection. A single moment of carelessness, and then, you’re dead, nothing you can do to prevent your downfall, and he tried to be vigilant, he really did, but today he wasn’t, and now, Maria needed more gauze, and Tommy ought to hurry up.

“If you want me to, I can take care of this right now,” Maria said, staring him down and nodding. Maybe she was a little angry. 

Joel shook his head. 

“She’s done it every time before,” Joel gave. “Might as well.”

Maria nodded, unconvinced.

“Did you do this deliberately?” she asked, and he winced with the question.

“No, ‘course not,” he said. “Why would I do that?”

And he knew what conclusions Maria had drawn, knew what logical jumps she’d made, and for a moment, he wondered if this had been deliberate. He knew Tess in pain. When they’d been attacked in Teton Village, they’d been so open with each other, the discomfort uniting them, together in pain. Though Tess could leave him, could move to a blue house at the other end of the settlement and patrol with Dina and avoid him at all costs, she couldn’t let him be alone and in pain. No, they had a silent pact, a strange agreement, the fights becoming irrelevant, emotions far away, and if he wanted Tess to come back, all he needed to do was find that pain in one of them, then ask, and so far, Tess had been fine. Tess had been completely fine.

But he hadn’t hurt himself on purpose. If he wanted to be in pain, he could jumped from a window, or bring a knife down this same section of his leg, or fall off of a horse. No, he tripped near sheet metal and tore open his jeans instead, Tommy hauling him back onto his horse and leading them home from their patrol route, blood dripping into Joel’s boots as they rode. When they got to the infirmary, Maria put needles into the sterilizer, talked him through what she would do, but no, he wanted Tess to stitch him up. Could someone find Tess? Right now, she was probably in the gardens, not the farthest walk from here. Could someone go get her so that she could stitch him up?

The song changed to “Goodbye Horses.” KJAX wasn’t really his type, but then again, he wasn’t sure that KJAX was anyone’s type, at least not yet. Recently, they’d debuted a Thursday night classical show, three hours of orchestral music, and the DJ who played on Tuesday mornings tended to play country, but otherwise, the records varied, 80s vinyl played alongside 2000s CDs. It was common hearing “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and Ella Fitzgerald in the same hour. Still, he could turn the radio on at home and have the house feel not so empty, glass still on his floor, only sleeping on one side of the bed. Sometimes, he would have the radio on so late that he would hear the last volunteer sign off, and he would say along with the DJ _until tomorrow, keep your radio tuned to KJAX 93.5, and keep on rocking._

“If you need to talk about it,” Maria said, though her tone asked him not to, “you can talk to me. I’m here for you.”

Though he nodded in affirmation, Maria was the last person he would talk to about Tess. And he still didn’t know why Tess and Maria had spoken the week Tess left, the conversation prompting Tess to apologize, a stalemate coming between them. For a moment, he thought about asking Maria what they’d talked about, but then, the door to the infirmary opened, and Tommy led Tess inside. Her hair had gotten so long. Though he’d seen her around town, had passed her in the gardens when he headed home for the evening, he hadn’t noticed just how long her hair had grown, past her shoulders, half-up and with fringe held back in a headband but still so long. And her cheeks flushed with the warmth, clear skies, freckles coming back for the season. They skirted summer, fifty-degree days feeling like a trip to the beach, and she worked in the sun all day, not hot enough to burn but warm enough to bring color back to her face. He didn’t recognize the shirt she wore, a grey henley, and had it not been baggy on her, he wouldn’t have thought anything of the shirt. But that was a man’s shirt. That was a man’s shirt.

“Needles are good to go,” Maria said as she stood up, motioned for Tess to sit down. “Supplies are out.”

“Thanks,” Tess said, and she looked down, purposefully away from him. This wasn’t how she’d expected to spend her day.

Silently, Maria signaled something to Tommy, so he cleared his throat, hands clasped, and asked, “Should I bring you both some lunch?”

Opening up the sterilizer, pulling out the metal tray of needles, Tess nodded, so Tommy headed out, Maria returning to her many duties, and when the door closed behind them, Tess and Joel were alone in the infirmary, fluorescent lights, no windows, an artificial and painful kind of bright. The kind of bright there had been in the Firefly hospital, the brightness of an operating room. Swallowing hard, he stared up at the ceiling, but he couldn’t avoid Tess, tilted his head so that he could look at her again, her back to him as she found swabs and gauze, the bottle of iodine Maria had left out, all the tools she hadn’t had in the QZ. And at this point, he didn’t care if he died of some opportunistic infection, maybe challenged God to send that to him instead. In a way, he felt that he should be that kind of fallible while Tess survived beyond her odds. He figured he would be the one of them to die first, and not because he tried to.

Muffled in the background, the radio changed to a Supertramp song, and she sighed, eyes closing. Maybe she’d tired of KJAX, just like he had. But no, he hadn’t tired of it, had kept the station on while he sat in the living room, while he made dinner, while he stared down the glass on his floor. He would clean it up eventually, he swore he would, but for now, he didn’t want to disrupt that kind of destruction. And in the silence of their too-big house, the radio made him feel as if he wasn’t alone, the sounds droning on until one in the morning, and then, the signature sendoff, and he mouthed each word, then forced himself to go to sleep before his thoughts returned. And he wondered if she too had-

“Do you mind if I turn this off?” she said, pointing to the radio.

Suddenly, his mouth felt so dry.

“No, go ahead,” he said, sounding raspier than usual.

When had he last spoken to her? The night she left, and the last thing she'd said to him was please, let me go.

“Okay, great,” she said, then turned off “Goodbye Stranger” and brought a hush over the room. Now, they were truly alone here, two people and a set of sterile needles and aimless thread and the metallic smell of iodine. Though he’d specifically requested that Tess be the one to sew up his leg, he suddenly wished he’d had Maria stitch him up instead, then help him walk home so he could sleep off the day. And maybe Tess would come by with dinner instead, and she would ask him how he felt, and he would say he was fine, and she wouldn’t believe him, so she’d stay a little while. That would’ve been better.

She dragged a rolling stool over to his cot, set up her supplies on the stool, then sat at the edge of his cot, peeled back the gauze to survey his injuries. Grimacing, she put the gauze back - so it was deep, then - and she started applying iodine to swabs, bringing the antiseptic gently over the cut, the burning sensation making him wince though he wouldn’t tell her that this hurt. And she didn’t ask if it hurt either. Instead, she threaded the needle, started her first stitch as if he were someone else, anyone else, an anonymous face, and they were back in the QZ, and she lived in that all-women’s bunkhouse she’d told him about, and someone had gotten hurt, and at least she knew what to do. Running a needle back and forth over the flame of a contraband candle, and when she was done, someone else wanted their ears pierced, infection be damned. They’d lost power for almost a week last year, and as a result, two women had died, so what did anyone have to lose? The cold weather was coming, so they might as well go wild.

Midway through stitching his cut, she glanced up at him, asked, “What happened?”

Her tone was quiet, almost indifferent. She didn’t really want to know; she was just making small talk. But when he met her gaze, he could see a quiet kind of pain in her eyes, a pain he knew and understood, a pain they didn’t want each other to see. Though she was angry with him, it still hurt her to see him hurt, even if she wished it didn’t.

“Scrap metal on the patrol route,” he gave. “I fell.”

She nodded as she brought the needle through his skin, the feeling as familiar as holding her hand. And she didn’t roll her eyes, chastise him, tell him that he was a klutz, ask him why he’d gotten near that scrap metal in the first place. Instead, she kept quiet, the needle puncturing skin, the thread pulling through. 

He couldn’t look at her anymore. He wanted her to say something. He wanted her to insult him, tell him he was an idiot, get mad about his carelessness. And he did want to see her mad. This time, he wanted her to pick a fight. He wanted her to say something intentionally abrasive, and he wanted to throw something intentionally abrasive back, and he wanted them both to hurt each other. He wanted to look at her and see vitriol in her eyes. He wanted her angry, overwhelmed, half-defeated and ready to punch him if need be, but instead, she kept quiet as she tied off his stitches, as she wrapped gauze around his thigh. And then, she was done, so she stood up and brought the used needle over to one of the infirmary’s sinks, throwing away the gauze Maria had used to stop his bleeding. All better. Now, he would sleep it off all alone in this place where Tess had spent a number of months, and he would be fine tomorrow. Eventually, Maria would take out his stitches, and barring any infections, he would be good as new. And he would have another mark from Tess on his body, another to add to his collection. 

“I miss you,” he said before he could second-guess himself.

After weeks of missing her, he couldn’t lie. When he looked over at her, she stood with her back to him, so he couldn’t see her expression, but her hands stilled, uncomfortable with the admission. He swallowed, trying to breathe through the discomfort, then added, “I want you to come home.”

She leaned her palms against the counter, gaze down. He wished he could look directly at her. He wished she would look at him. 

“I need space,” she said, exhaling softly, forcing herself to relax. He wondered if she’d rehearsed that line in the mirror.

And to his surprise, she flicked the radio back on, and the DJ gave commentary to _lunch hour,_ the town traffic was at an all-time daily high, delays on Benson Street and Anton Court, take caution if traveling in those directions. As for the weather, sunny and clear skies today with fifty-five degrees as the current temperature, and now, an old classic best paired with a day like today. To Joel’s chagrin, the DJ put on “A Case of You.” He ought to learn that on the guitar, but Joni Mitchell had tuned to account for her polio, so maybe he would never come close.

He wanted to say the exact right thing, but he didn’t think an _exact right thing_ existed for him to say. In the end, he could only be honest, but honestly hadn’t helped. No, she needed space, the word _time_ implied, and he felt every inch of that space, from his cot to the counter, from his marble kitchen to the picture windows of the blue house. The only thing worse than ruining something he treasured was the revelation that she might never find her way back to him. 

The door opened, jolting them both, but it was only Tommy, two paper-wrapped sandwiches in his hands. Lunch, a normal lunch, and Tess headed over to the door, not turning around to face Joel, barely even looking at Tommy. She took the paper package with _mustard_ scribbled on the outside, then left the infirmary, not looking back.

* * *

“You know, I think we all forget just how good we have it here,” Kaya said, her head on Tess’s lap, the two of them on the couch in the living room of the blue house. “Those of us who don’t go beyond the walls that often, we forget what else is out there.”

While Tess sat up, Kaya lay across the cushions; Tess brought her fingers through Kaya’s hair, stroking the other woman’s scalp, a gesture calming for them both. Since the morning, Tess had felt a pent-up energy within her, and she wanted to hold someone, hug someone, make someone dinner, give them some kind of comfort. And now, Kaya was on her lap, so she could run her fingers through Kaya’s hair, more for her own benefit than for Kaya’s.

“Even those of us who go beyond the walls,” Tess gave, “tend to forget that it could be much worse.”

Beyond them, the town was still bright, the spring days growing longer, and they’d put the stereo on soft, “Hannah Hunt” playing on KJAX. Sunlight coming through their picture windows, rays reflecting off of the leaves of the plants they’d left on the windowseats. When she moved in, Tess had had to clear a corner for her herbs, and now, Kaya watered the herbs each day, then came to Tess fretting when one’s leaves turned grey. Root rot, a simple fix, and the next day, Tess went out back and repotted the plant, and Kaya watched and wondered how she’d managed to figure that out. Could it really be so simple? Kaya always killed Cat’s plants. But anything was _that simple_ when someone had enough knowledge and time to care. As a child - or, really, until the outbreak - Tess had thought that everything skilled, like plumbing or carpentry or caring for plants or teaching, took years to master, constant schooling and an abundance of caution, but in reality, no one knew what they were doing, and they stumbled their way through life hoping for the best, hoping not to hurt anyone. And she’d seen Maria in a panic enough times to know that everyone put up a facade of mastery and understanding but, beneath it all, felt like a fraud, so she showed Kaya one of her books on herbs and plant care, an old find, the cover taped back on, a library checkout card left in the back saying this was due in February of 1993. Here, this line - Tess had circled it, then dog-eared the page - common plant afflictions and basic remedies. Leaves turning grey? Root rot, the plant needs room. A bigger pot should solve the problem right away. That simple. No magic, no mastery, just a line in a book she’d stolen, and the basil survived that week, so they tore off leaves and put it on pasta. That simple.

“Sometimes, I wish I could go back to those Firefly camps,” Kaya said, half-hushed, a shameful but exciting admission. “We never thought about the past, and when we thought about the future, it was so rose-colored. Yes, we were making a difference, and we probably wouldn’t survive the next week. Either FEDRA would bomb us, or we would bomb ourselves. And I never had to think about anything other than surviving. Heat, food, water. My interests were so narrow. My kid, my husband, and staying alive.”

“And now it feels like if we’re not happy, then there’s something wrong with us,” Tess filled in, making a fist with her open hand.

“Yeah, deeply wrong,” Kaya said. “Some kind of psychological fuckup.”

“Did you leave the Fireflies voluntarily?” 

“Yes. Well, no,” Kaya gave. Tess furrowed her brow, so Kaya continued, “My husband was killed in one of the attacks. They wanted me to...step up, I suppose. And until then, I’d been in the dark about a lot of what they’d been doing. It was me and the kids, really. When they talked about airstrikes, I knew I needed to get out, so Cat and I snuck out one night. There’s bulletholes in the tail of the plane. Maybe we should go look sometime.”

“Would piss Maria off.”

“I think we’re both in the mood to piss Maria off.”

Maria had been pissed just to see Tess that morning. She had a certain look, like someone scolding a child through giving the silent treatment. Actually, Maria did remind Tess of her mother, come to think of it. 

“I saw her today,” Tess said, swallowing uncomfortably. Though she didn’t want to talk about stitching up Joel, she still wanted someone else to know what had happened. For reasons she didn’t understand, it felt wrong to let that memory stay stuck in her mind, and if she didn’t share it with someone else, she feared she would keep thinking of it over and over again, unable to escape the thoughts. “And Joel.”

Kaya looked up at Tess, softened a little. Maybe Tess shouldn’t have brought this up.

“Did they ambush you?”

She had such beautiful eyes, dark brown with a ring of gold around the pupil. Tess would much rather just look at her eyes.

“No, nothing like that,” Tess said, shaking her head. “He got hurt and wanted me to dress his wounds.”

“Dress them?”

“Stitch them.”

“What, like you’re the only person here who can sew?”

Tess laughed lightly, raised her brows.

“Yeah, exactly like that.”

“He asked for you?”

Tess huffed. 

“Of course he did.”

“Why _of course?_ ”

“Because he thinks that, if we’re both miserable at the same time, I’ll come straight home, and everything will go back to normal,” Tess said, as if she hadn’t hoped the same thing that morning while Tommy led her to the community center, to the infirmary. 

“But have you told him why he fucked up?” Kaya asked. “You know I’m on your side, and I don’t know him that well, but he seems like the type to do what’s asked. And he cares about you.”

“I have, I think,” Tess gave. “Leading up to...before I came here, we’d been fighting a lot.”

Her cheeks felt hot, but she wanted someone else to know. After nights of going to bed next to him feeling angry and trapped, she wanted someone else to bear witness. She wanted to know that her emotions fit her situation.

“And anyway,” Tess continued, “it was a lot of the same things over and over again. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t think I was being unreasonable. And I swear to you that I wasn’t.”

“What set it all off in the first place?” Kaya asked, and Tess knew she couldn’t say any more.

Between them, the silence felt new and uncomfortable, Tess’s hand still in Kaya’s hair, a muffled Damien Rice song playing on the stereo, and this house was a haven, with its plants by the windows and swept oak floors and big plush couch. They hid a TV in the corner of the room, only plugged it in at night when someone wanted to watch a DVD, and then, they set the thing up on the adjacent window seats, balancing the thing against many pots of plants. The living room stayed too bright during the day, the screen hard to see, so mostly, they sat down here and read, Cat migrating to different spots around the room while Eugene sat in the recliner and Tess and Kaya shared the couch. A family. She could call this a family. They ate family meals together at the same table, and Cat always set the table, and Tess and Kaya would chop vegetables together while KJAX played off of Cat’s transistor radio, and none of the dishes matched. Tess didn’t even care that Kaya and Cat were vegetarians. She didn’t even care that all of Kaya’s books were about the second World War. Whenever she came home, someone was happy to see her, and they wanted to know how her day had been, and she wouldn’t be stuck with her thoughts until she retired to her bedroom that night, and sometimes, she would even be exhausted enough to not think then. 

She thought she and Joel had had something like this, but she struggled to piece together those memories. Baking pies, cold marble counters, and Joel wasn’t allowed to roll out the crusts because he always broke them. Dragging their mattress down the stairs, bumping into walls, needing to set the pictures straight the next morning, and they slept alongside the fire, cold nights, running whatever taps they could in hope that the pipes wouldn’t freeze, a whiteout blizzard with them so warm inside. Breakfast in the fall, when she started to miss making breakfast, eggs cracked against the hot rim of a cast iron, and bacon grease to keep the eggs from sticking. And butter, lots of butter, butter on toast, butter on cooked vegetables in the winter. And Ellie coming over for dinner, complaining about the farming assignment she had, asking to go on group patrols. Was she ready? Joel would say to her face that she was, but later, he would tell Tess that she wasn’t, but Tess could see through him. Even if Ellie had been the best candidate there ever was for group patrols, Joel would still hold her back, ask her to look both ways, warn her about the worst. And back then, Tess had thought him overly protective, an kind of _helicopter parent,_ but now, she understood. She understood that he didn’t want Ellie to get hurt. She understood that part of loving someone was wanting to shield them from pain, and caring beyond logic. Love had no logic, and pain lacked logic too, so love could so easily become pain. When she left, she hadn’t meant to hurt him, but she hadn’t known how to love him in a different way. And she hadn’t known how to love herself in a way that kept her in that house.

“I’ve lost you,” Kara said, shaking Tess from her thoughts.

“Sorry,” Tess said, not really meaning the word.

“Hey,” Kaya said, then stood up and walked over to the bookshelf pressed against the wall behind the couch, full of Kaya’s history books and Cat’s old sketchbooks, plus some blank pages and piles of spare paper. Going through the shelf, Kaya looked for something specific, eyes trained on spines, then pulled out something leather-bound and scratched at the edges. Coming back to the couch, she dropped the book onto Tess’s lap. “Helped me one time, but those pages are ripped out now. Write it down, just for you. Get it out of your mind and into here.”

Opening the book, Tess found that it was a ruled journal, not a book. And maybe fifty pages had been torn out of the front, bits of Kaya’s handwriting left on the fractured edges. 

“And I promise you,” Kaya said, looming above Tess, “it’s not going to be like this forever.”

Though she didn’t know what to believe, Tess nodded in agreement anyway.

* * *

The sun set later and later each day. Sitting in the living room armchair, Joel held a hand up, tried to block out the evening glare. KJAX played “You Can Call Me Al,” and to his surprise, he still knew all the lyrics.

Across town, Kaya asked Tess if she’d seen the Chevy Chase music video, they were both too young for that but, hey, maybe their parents had had _taste._ And Tess didn’t know what Kaya was talking about - their windows didn’t face the glare, so they could sit in the living room comfortably, Cat leaning against the window seats and sketching the plants, Eugene probably at the bar - but Tess had seen _Christmas Vacation_ too many times. At one point, she and her family even had a vacation like that, her mother thinking it would be a great idea to go visit the grandparents for Christmas, and they had the wood-paneled station wagon to boot. But wait, she was mixing metaphors, there were two movies, _Vacation_ and _Christmas Vacation,_ but Chevy Chase was in both. Why had he been in the music video? _He just mouthed the words to the whole song,_ Kaya said, and Tess furrowed her brow, _that’s pointless._

Maria and Tommy needed to comb through this month’s store logs, see who had taken what from the supplies. Joel had barely taken anything, so he had a surplus for next month, and with Tess moving into the blue house, there wasn’t the expected deficit after Victor moved elsewhere. Not wanting to go through the long list of charges, Tommy went over to their living room radio, turned the volume up. Hey, Paul Simon. This was a good song. He tapped his feet along, danced a little as he walked back into their kitchen workspace, and Maria said _stop that, we need to get this done,_ and he pouted a little, so she rolled her eyes. _Seriously, we have to get this done._

After chores, Dina had wanted to go to the orchard, probably after dark, probably to do something they shouldn’t, so Ellie took off her work-clothes - covered in cow shit, the fucking worst - and dropped them into her hamper. What would Dina like? Not that Ellie cared what Dina thought, and even if Ellie did care, which she didn’t, Dina was dating Jesse, and they were, like, disgustingly inseparable. Like, disgustingly. Ellie had thought Joel and Tess were bad, but they were _nothing_ compared to Jesse and Dina. And Ellie didn’t want to think about Joel and Tess, especially not after all she’d heard, the rumors, the muffled sounds from the kitchen. She wondered if they knew she’d heard them fighting. Not really, just muffled shouts, but she would take her headphones off and hear the white noise of them being angry at each other, and she would sigh, put her headphones back on. And Tess lived with Cat now, fucking strange. Ellie didn’t want to get involved. Really, she wanted to move across town too, as far away from these people as possible. And now was a great time to do something with Dina and Jesse, head out to the orchard, probably light up, kick back and relax. She hated the farming assignment, she was starting to hate all cows indiscriminately, and she hated that, in a world where radio had been reborn, the DJs only played old crap. Years ago, she’d heard Tess talk about disliking Madonna, and now, unfortunately, she understood.

Enough was enough; Joel needed to draw the curtains, or else he would lose his mind with this glare. Standing up, he caught a glimpse of the glass on his floor, shimmering in the sunlight, a thousand awful pieces, the picture in the same place it had been when Tess broke the frame. He really needed to clean the glass up. Why hadn’t he cleaned it up yet? Upstairs, he had a new frame, one he’d found while on patrols, and that one had been in its original packaging, no ghosts. If he wanted the picture back up on his shelves, he could sweep up the glass, then unfold the picture, put it into a new frame. Why hadn’t he done that? What had been holding him back?

While Joel went upstairs and found the new frame, the DJ took a mic break. Something about the blue plate special. Something about cigars. No one had anything new to talk about. The weather, a traffic report with _logging truck breakdown_ as its most interesting feature, the settlement was at its best when life remained dull. In the workshop upstairs, Joel found the frame, tore open the packaging - he hadn’t done that in a long time - and here was the frame, glass panel, wood shaped around an example image, black velvet stand. The DJ put on a new song, and with the first few notes, Joel smiled.

As he walked down the stairs, he missed Ellie leaving the garage, water and snacks in her pack, looking both ways because she feared she would be caught. Her Walkman got FM, so she turned it on, put her headphones in, and at least this song wasn’t too bad. Had Joel been there, he would’ve told her that this was Mama Cass, golden pipes, one of the best performers there’s ever been, and also, this song was in a really popular television show about a bunch of people stuck on an island, and it was definitely purgatory, but the showrunners pretended it wasn’t. _Nobody can tell you, there’s only one song worth singin’._ And she wore her best hoodie - Tess had patched the elbows with red-check flannel - and though she needed to walk a long way to get to the orchard, the place would be empty at this time of day, just the three of them among the trees, and the _view_. Tonight would be a good night, for Ellie needed a good night.

Tommy and Maria went through the books. They both hated balancing books. Underneath their kitchen table, he nudged her foot, and she nudged back but stayed focused on the books. She liked to chew the tops of pens. He always knew which pens she’d used because the tops were all caved in. Once more, he nudged her foot, and she laughed, sinister grin, then kicked his shin. Two could play at that game.

And the blue house was full of noise, Tess and Kaya turning the radio up as they started on dinner, and Cat decided that right now would be a _great_ time to go for a walk - _Mom, you’re embarrassing me_ left unsaid - and they both knew all the lyrics. For once, they both knew the lyrics, not just Kaya singing along to Blondie while Tess wished the DJ would play Lucinda Williams. And they needed to chop vegetables for dinner - tomatoes for a feta salad, torn-apart spinach in a skillet - but instead, they sang at the top of their lungs, _make your own kind of music, sing your own special song_ , looking at each other rather than at the cutting boards, and butter sizzled in a hot pan, almost burning. The day had been warm enough to prompt them to open the windows, and this pocket of half-summer warmth ripened tomatoes on their vines but held back strawberries, and dinner tonight felt hopeful, so close to perfect, mouths watering with anticipation. Four people around the table. Tess wondered if Joel ate dinner alone now. She hoped he at least went to Maria and Tommy’s sometimes. But really, what she hoped was that, after this, there would be some Liz Phair, or anyone else she and Kaya could sing along to, because this kitchen felt _alive,_ and she wanted to feel alive. She wanted to feel light as air. She wanted to feel the way she felt on her honeymoon, too big a word, a bedsheet in the sunny tallgrass fields, and Joel was inside her when they heard patrol horses approaching, but they were cocooned enough in the grass that she leaned down against his chest, his back flat against the earth, and they laughed together as the horses passed, none the wiser. She wanted this dark period in her life to finally be over.

In the orchard, Ellie held the blunt while Dina and Jesse made out, like, _really_ made out, the whole-body kind of making out that ought to be sex, and they were shameless about it too, Maybe the weed had lowered their inhibitions. All Ellie felt when she smoked was relaxed. Aimless. She lay back against the trunk of one tree, lip-smacking sounds to her left, and she looked up at the mountains. Snow-capped, even in late spring. Someday, she wanted to go up to the tops of those mountains, wanted to start where it was hot as hell and eventually dig her boots into snow, then come back down again. And Dina and Jesse were being too loud, but she didn’t want to listen to the radio either, so she put her earbuds in but didn’t play any music, relished instead in the silence. Just the spring breeze, and Ellie herself, and the mountains. Nothing could ruin her evening, not a single thing.

The glass went into the garbage. Joel pressed the photograph against the new glass plate, then assembled the frame, locking the pieces together. There. Though the crease stuck out, at least the two of them in the picture remained on one side, nothing marring the pair. She needed space. If she needed space, then he would give her space. For once, not having Tess here felt hopeful. Maybe she would come back. His mood was too good for him to feel hopeless. Even if someone came by right now and told him that Tess had left the settlement forever, he would still think she planned on coming back. He could do this. He felt invigorated. Mama Cass sang on the radio, and he wanted to sing along. He wanted to clean the entire house. He wanted to make a four-course meal and feed it to all of his friends and family. He wanted to go out back and apologize to Ellie, make amends, bring them all together. He could do this. He could handle this. And tomorrow morning, he would wake up to the sound of Tess’s alarm and not be sad that she wasn’t there to silence the thing, and he would walk downstairs and see the picture of the two of them together and remember how great a day that had been. And he wouldn’t move on, but he would move forward, and that was enough for now.

_Until tomorrow, keep your radio tuned to KJAX 93.5, and keep on rocking._


	19. Well Then

Summer came quickly that year, so the construction projects started early, and every day, he helped rebuild one of the houses on the edge of town, decrepit old place, somewhere for a young family to move into next year. Tommy kept conversation to a minimum, so Joel could stay quiet the whole day, hammering down nails, putting up new boards. So far, the frame was done, they’d made great progress and would surely be finished before winter, so sometimes, he would sit back and breathe for a moment, his mind going blank as he looked up at the mountains around the settlement, his palm coming to his forehead as he wiped away sweat. The back of his neck had burnt in the sun, and he didn’t know how to make that pain go away.

When he walked home, he took the long way. It was nice to see the town at night, families cooking dinner, people coming together, the bar full; right at the end of the day, the place felt so lively, like a home, a place that made life worth living. There was a pride flag hung in one window, and he used decorations like that one as landmarks. First, he passed the pride flag, and then, he would go by the lumber bench on someone’s porch, and then, the house with a fenced-in yard from which a German Shepherd would bark at him. Of course, he would pet the dog, then head back on his route, check off the people who left a Christmas tree - an old-fashioned plastic one, not a real spruce - up in their house all year, and then, he would stop a few paces back from one window. The lights were always on at that time of night, a bright kitchen, floral-painted cabinets, dishes coming out for dinner. Tonight, the windows were open, the people inside hoping for a crossbreeze. His own home had grown so stuffy that he’d started sleeping on the couch, the upstairs far too warm. Though the couch hurt his back, at least he didn’t wake up sweating anymore.

With the windows open, he could hear the voices of the people inside, sounds of laughter, ceramic plates set down on the table, the silverware drawer opening. And then, Tess came into view, her face refracted by the window, close to him but so far away, and she smiled as she set the table, called over to the other woman in the kitchen, asked if they had any baguette left. Yes, there was extra baguette from breakfast, and Cat’s mother came into view, long hair in two braids, tank top and jean shorts, too hot out to wear anything else. Cat must’ve been at the stove, and Eugene was probably at the bar, and though Joel swore that a fifth person lived in this house, he couldn’t think of who that was, hadn’t seen that person the other times he’d looked through the window. Tess brought a big bowl full of food over to the kitchen table, then asked Cat where the hot sauce was, and Cat called out that the bottle was on top of the fridge, and Tess asked why the sauce was there, and Cat made a universal _I don’t know_ sound. _Well, then,_ Tess said, and she went over to the fridge, stood on tiptoe, then took down a repurposed soda bottle. 

When she turned around, Joel froze, wondered if she could see him at that angle, the sunset making him a silhouette. To his chagrin, she paused in recognition, stared out the window at him, her gaze boring into him. Should he run off? No, he couldn’t run off, for that would make him look like a coward, or a stalker, or some other insulting word he couldn’t think of because she was staring at him, directly at him, and his chest ached. He wanted to go home, but his home was empty. What he really wanted was for her to open the front door of this house - the door’s peeling blue paint splintering beneath his fingers, their bodies so close that he could feel her warmth - and invite him in for dinner.

She didn’t smile at him, but she didn’t look angry either. Then, she waved halfheartedly, and Cat called her over to the dinner table, asked what was taking so long, so Tess turned away from him, and he started walking away as quickly as he could, not wanting her to look at him again. No, this was a normal walk home, the route he always took, and he was still pretty far from home, he needed to go home, he needed to make his own dinner and go to sleep in his own bed and wake up the next morning and not think about her. She wanted space, so she went and found space. No, she hadn’t wanted space, but he didn’t want to think about what she wanted. No, he wanted to think about dinner. Dinner. There was some ground beef in the freezer, beef Tess had put into a container and shoved in there, then shut the freezer door and let the eventual avalanche become someone else’s problem. He could take the beef out and see if the rest of the frozen food would fall out too.

Warming the ground beef in a skillet, he thought of her face. He thought of her eyes. He thought of how she hadn’t been angry to see him. Maybe he should go talk to her. No, he shouldn’t, she wanted space, he shouldn’t go talk to her. And how would he look if he came by the gardens and asked to speak with her? Desperate, that was how he would look, and he didn’t want to look desperate. No, he wasn’t desperate, and relationships fell apart all the time. When they both moved into this house, they went back to the ages they were the day the outbreak began, so he could say that they’d simply married too young, that they had been so swept up in their own stories of the future that they’d forgotten who they were. And they weren’t the types who married. No, they were survivors, hardened survivors, and a nice place to live didn’t change that. Nothing changed that they were cutthroat, their histories full of poor decisions, their lives making the world ultimately worse. At one time, he’d thought that that shared history made them valuable to each other, but now, he thought that they ought to find good people instead. And Cat’s family was good. Secondhand, he’d heard that Ellie and Cat had stopped being friends, though he didn’t know whose decision that had been, and he knew that, had Tess been there, she would’ve berated him for finally accepting Cat now that Cat and Ellie hated each other. But Cat’s family was good, for Cat and her mother took people in, Eugene and Tess, people who needed families, and they always had dinner at the same time every night. They ate dinner together at the same time every night, and then, Joel walked home alone, ate dinner alone, and went to bed alone.

It was too hot to sleep upstairs. The couch still had sheets over the cushions. He didn’t bother closing the curtains.

* * *

The construction broke early the next day. Rain was coming; they would all pack up for the day, maybe put in a few extra hours tomorrow. Joel went home because he didn’t know where else to go, and he didn’t take the long way in order to get there. Settled in for the afternoon, he had the television on, working his way through the DVD season of _Northern Exposure_ he’d found, and he drank two fingers of whiskey because it was five o’clock somewhere, just not in Jackson. When a knock came at the door, he froze, wished he’d shut the curtains, and he lay flat on the couch, hoping that anyone looking through the windows wouldn’t see him. But the knocking wouldn’t let up, so he sighed, stood up. Maybe Maria wanted something. He knew better than to keep Maria waiting.

When he opened the door, he stilled, Tess staring back at him. She held a basket in her arms, one stuffed with ears of corn, zucchinis, an eggplant with four tomatoes on top, and a little plastic container of strawberries. Usually, she and a few of the other gardeners would deliver baskets like this one to the older folks and young families around town, help those people out with their groceries, but he and Tess had never received such baskets. Instead, Tess would come home with as many vegetables as she could carry - thankfully, their house was right next to the gardens, so she could haul a lot - and they would line her finds up on the kitchen counter, then determine what they would have for dinner. Though he’d been to the grocer’s in town for eggs and milk plenty of times, he had gone without vegetables for a while, always expecting her to walk through the door with two eggplants and a zucchini in tow, dinner coming together in minutes.

“Hey,” she said, and she sounded so normal. He wanted her to leave. “We had some extras, and I saw your lights were on, so.”

She held the basket out for him, and he took it, the handles still feeling warm from her hands. 

“Thanks,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

When was the last time he ate a vegetable? He didn’t want to answer that question, and he wanted Tess to walk back down the porch-steps and return to the gardens, or return to the blue house she shared with Cat and Cat’s mother and Eugene and the other person who lived there, the one he didn’t remember, and he wanted Tess gone, but he didn’t want her gone at all. No, he wanted to invite her in, and she would see _Northern Exposure_ on the television and comment that her parents had loved that show, and she would put her feet up on the couch, and she would be wearing his socks, and he wouldn’t even be mad. Instead, he’d dump out his drawer and tell her to take every single sock, take all of them, and she could do whatever she wanted with all of them, tear holes in their toes, wear down their heels, he didn’t care anymore. He didn’t care anymore. He wanted his world to return to normal. He wanted her to come home.

“See you around,” she said, and she nodded once, a kind of peace offering, then headed back down the porch-steps, her white headphones swinging from the back-pocket of her jean shorts. 

Her arms were covered in freckles again. She looked like summer. She looked like Tess, with her hair pulled back and her shoulders strong, her bootlaces loosened for the afternoon, her stolen iPod clipped on the pocket of her shorts. And she was walking the wrong way, away from him, back to the gardens, and he watched as she picked up her pack, put in her headphones, started her walk home for the day. Not home, never home, but the blue house where she lived now. He wondered what her bedroom looked like there. Twin bed, white quilt, a poster of a mountain range hanging on the wall, the closet sparse and her pack leaning against the bedside-table, books left in stacks on the floor because she couldn’t convince herself to stay there forever. He hoped that the mattress hurt her back, and that she’d stained the quilt, and that she didn’t have a proper drawer for her headbands, and he hoped that she hated life in that house. He hoped she hated vegetarian dinners and Cat and her mother and how much Eugene talked about the Fireflies, and he hoped that she relished in the thought of coming home, finally returning to where she belonged. In the end, all she needed was a sign, and then, she would come home, and that awful mattress, those terrible dinners, all of it would be in the past, and the bedroom upstairs wouldn’t be empty anymore. And when he went into the closet, he would find her clothes there too.

Closing the front door, he brought the basket of vegetables into the kitchen. Zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes. Had Tess stayed for dinner, she would’ve insisted on making ratatouille, one of her favorites. When it came to certain foods, she didn’t see the point in trying, no vanilla extract for sugar cookies, no cinnamon for oatmeal, but she liked ratatouille because she could follow a recipe from the old times without substitutions. Herbs from her little windowsill pots, vegetables from the gardens, she could go through the whole recipe without fault, and the meal tasted so fresh. In the kitchen, he found the cookbook, a classic Jacques Pepins. She’d dog-eared the page. When he opened the book up, he found her handwriting all over the pages, notes to herself, reminders for later. _Joel likes this with extra basil._

Going over to the windowsill, he stopped short. The sills were empty. When she left, she’d taken the herbs with her, and he’d never noticed.

* * *

She loved her room in the blue house. Her bedframe creaked every time she turned over at night, and the closet was so narrow that she could barely fit her clothes inside. For now, her headbands lived in the desk-drawer, her books stacked alongside the desk, and her pack hung on a hat hook by the door, waiting for her next adventure. And the desk, she loved the desk, long and pressed against the big window, looking out at the town. She would sit there every night and write in her journal until she felt she could go to bed thoughtlessly, and then, she would turn off the lamp, her whole room going dark because there weren’t any overhead lights, and she would crawl to the bed, then wait until her alarm clock - borrowed from Cat, one that looked like a baby chick and had her wedding headband wrapped around its head - sounded off in the morning. And then, she would go out on patrols with either Eugene or Dina, and then, she would go to the gardens, and then, she would go home. And then, the cycle would repeat.

She loved the big window. She loved sitting at the desk and writing but then looking up at the lights around town, the bordering walls, the bulbs flicking off in every house. From here, she could just barely see the top floor of where Joel lived, but he never had the upstairs lights on anymore, hadn’t had them on for weeks. Somehow, he seemed not to know that she always caught him walking home by the blue house; when she looked out at him last night, he acted as if caught red-handed, but she’d been expecting him. And they both knew that his walk home from the construction site didn’t pass by the blue house. No, he needed to go out of his way, and he’d gone out of his way every night since the construction had started. Well, not every night, for there had been a Thursday when she hadn’t seen him, and Cat had asked why Tess kept looking out the window, and Tess hadn’t been able to give her a good answer. 

But thankfully, she couldn’t see Joel from the desk’s window anymore. At first, she’d been restless in the blue house, and when Kaya saw how haggard Tess looked, she gave Tess an old notebook, told Tess to fill it with thoughts. Any and all thoughts, the ones that hurt to think about, the ones that forced sleep away. Since then, Tess had written every night before bed, and now, she could sleep again. She could sleep again! And when she slept, she didn’t dream of Joel anymore. That was something.

Tonight, she was stuck on the vegetables. She knew he wasn’t eating well, but she didn’t want to care. If she was gone, then she ought to stay gone, but that house was so big, and he only knew to buy bread, milk, and eggs, or meat when they could manage some. Had he ever gone through the vegetable aisle at the grocer’s? No, she always brought home vegetables, or plucked some from her own plants out back. She could remember everything in the freezer. By now, he must’ve made his way through most of the frozen corn, the extra beef, the pizza dough and frozen raspberries. And summer produce was far too good to ignore. 

She’d been kind to bring him vegetables, but instead, she felt as if she were enabling him. If she wanted to leave, then she needed to _leave,_ but she didn’t want to leave. She’d never wanted to leave, not even a little bit. And she wanted to go home, but she knew better than to think she could return home. Months ago, she’d given him plenty of chances, and he hadn’t taken any of them. Her mother used to say that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. She wasn’t about to do the same thing again. 

But at least she had Kaya and Cat, and Eugene too. At least Dina was bright and bubbly - and sly, in a good way - on patrols. She didn’t need Joel; she just wanted him. And wanting was a good thing, she’d stopped hating herself for wanting, but she couldn’t let want get the best of her. No, he needed to let her in first. He needed to prove to her that they were a team.

And she needed to accept that he might never let her in, and that she would need to stop loving him. Though she didn’t like that option, it still loomed on the horizon, a dark cloud inching closer to her home. She needed to accept the inevitability. She needed to let go of him.

Her pencil went dull, and thankfully, she felt empty enough not to sharpen it. Instead, she closed her journal, then looked up and found that the upstairs lights were on in Joel’s home. She squinted, tried to focus, but she couldn’t see much in the dark, the house so far away, but the lights were on. The lights were on. He was upstairs.

Turning off the lamp, she stared at the lights. Their bedroom. She missed those sheets. She missed having a queen-sized bed. She missed sleeping next to someone, next to him, him specifically. She missed breakfasts at the Tipsy Bison all summer because they didn’t want to heat up the house. She missed _steak._ And she wanted to go home, and in the morning, she wanted to go out on patrols with him, but she couldn’t, not anymore. Instead, she needed to let go, so in the dark, she closed her curtains, and the lights on her horizon disappeared. Crawling to bed in the dark, she pushed the lights from her mind, shifted her thoughts to the blankness she craved, all of her worries shoved into the journal Kaya had given her, her day over. She had nothing left to think about, no worries remaining.

But when her alarm went off the next morning, she wondered if she’d gotten any sleep at all.

* * *

When he turned the bedroom lights on, he closed his eyes as if waiting for an injection, wincing and not wanting to look. He’d left the bed unmade, but the blankets on her side were still tucked in. Because he hadn’t slept there all summer, the flannel sheets were still on the bed, the cooler cotton ones now on the couch downstairs. He’d spaced out his clothes in the closet in hope of making the room look less empty, but the spacing hadn’t worked.

Had she left anything behind? No book on the nightstand, no soap in the shower. The wash basins downstairs, and cans of tomatoes, she left those, but he didn’t think those counted as her own possessions. Opening his sock drawer, he counted the number of pairs, and no, that couldn’t be right, that was too many. Since when had he had that many pairs of socks? But her own drawer was empty, her pajamas out of the lower drawers. She’d taken the sweater Maria had made her even though it had been spring when she left, and she had taken her mittens, and the books she hadn’t read yet. She had taken everything.

Though he didn’t want to think through the exact words, didn’t want to explain the situation to himself, he knew that she’d left and hadn’t intended to return. No, she’d taken everything, no trace of her left behind, and he thrust every drawer open, pushed his clothes to one side of the closet, hoped for some trace, some tiny thing she’d left behind, something that meant she would come back, but the drawers were empty. The drawers were empty, and in the bathroom, only one toothbrush sat on the sink, and she’d been the last person to make the bed. He couldn’t make her favorite complete dinner, for she’d taken the basil too.

But in his peripheries, he saw something, so he edged toward one drawer, inched the drawer open. Though her lineup of headbands, warmest on one side and coolest on the other, had gone with her, the silk scarf remained, a gift from Maria, purple and worn only on special occasions. He picked the scarf up, so soft and smooth, and he could remember her wearing this to every dance, the season irrelevant. _I do dress up,_ she would tell him, but she’d always been wearing jeans and a plain shirt anyway, one silk scarf hardly making a difference. Against his better judgment, he held the scarf to his face, closed his eyes, and he could remember dancing with her, slow songs, her body so close to his. At the winter dance right before everything went wrong, people had stopped staring at them, and she’d let him pull her out onto the floor, no care given about the song, and she laughed more than usual that night. They weren’t very good dancers, but they wanted to have a good time, and they were half-drunk and wearing holes in the heels of their socks, and she laughed as he tried to spin her around, their arms all tangled up. When a slow song came on, she didn’t call him a sap, instead relaxed against him and danced with him. He could feel her hair and the silk scarf against his cheek as he held her, and so far as he was aware, everyone else had gone home, parents tucking their children into bed, young love tentative on a doorstep, and only he and Tess remained, the twinkle lights casting them in a warm glow. The last dancers on the floor, two people in an empty room, an Old Hollywood portrait of love, _and then she asks me, do you feel alright? And I say yes, I feel wonderful tonight._

He knew that he could lie to himself and say that she’d left this scarf behind deliberately, but he refused to lie. No, she must’ve missed this one when she packed up, and because she only wore it on special occasions, she hadn’t wondered where it had gone. But no matter why the scarf was still in the drawer, a piece of her remained in this house, a tiny piece but a piece nonetheless. Someday, she might come back looking for this, and then, he could ask her to come home. Then, he would have an opportunity to ask her to come home.

But the summer dance wasn’t for another month, and he figured she would sooner mourn this scarf than knock on his front door and ask to look around. If he waited for her to seek him out, he would wait for the rest of his life. No, he needed to be proactive. If he wanted her to come home, then he needed to ask, and he needed to ask soon. After months of separation, he needed to stop dragging his feet. He needed direction, and more than that, he needed her to come home.

He hadn’t made the ratatouille tonight, the loss of the basil plant taking away his appetite, but he still had all of the ingredients. If he asked her over for dinner, then she could bring basil, and garlic too, lots of garlic. Yes, they could have dinner together. He would pick up bread in town just for the occasion. He would wear his Sunday best, even though it was still the middle of the week. And maybe she would want to come home.

Before he left the bedroom, he stripped the bed of its sheets, then brought the linens downstairs, started them in a soak. Tomorrow morning, he would hang the sheets on the line, let the sun warm them up, and later, he would fold up their winter bedding, store it for the season. And maybe he would start sleeping in the bed again.

* * *

How had she gotten through whole days of gardening before she found the iPod? Okay, maybe _found_ was the wrong word, but still, even a few minutes of silence felt hours long. Oh, thank whatever powers remained that Tess could listen to Frank Ocean again. Kaya and Cat hadn’t known who he was, and Tess had been all too excited to show them, passing each of them an earbud. Of course, Joel hadn’t understood the appeal, but Joel thought Bob Dylan was a saint or something, so, you know, pinch of salt.

All of the tomato plants needed to be pruned, and if she put on “Pyramids” and worked fast, she could get the pruning done before the song ended. Though last summer they’d had a pest problem, the leaves weren’t half-eaten this year, thank goodness. And the tomatoes were so thick and juicy, Kaya had made a big salad out of some last night, tomatoes and cucumbers and apple cider vinegar and feta cheese, so good. There were few things in life better than fresh summer produce, and-

Someone tapped her shoulder, so she turned around, found Cat standing there. Cat always had music when she gardened, her Walkman tucked into her shorts, headphones she’d taped paper cat ears onto put over her head. Nodding to the left, Cat looked into the distance, and when Tess turned that way, she saw Joel at the edge of the gardens, far enough away that he hadn’t seen her yet. Joel at midday? He held something in his hands, maybe lunch from the house, but no, the house was on the opposite end of the gardens. Maybe construction had broken for the day, but no, she would’ve seen Eugene by now, dumb old bastard, always bothering her at work and asking if she could spare more strawberries. If Joel was alone, then he’d come here on purpose, and she knew that that purpose was to see her.

Then, he spotted her, their eyes meeting, and he looked like a little lost boy, not sure if he should walk toward her or run in the opposite direction. Taking her headphones out, she headed toward him, pocketing the earbuds.

“What’s up?” she asked, trying to act casual and not concerned.

He took a moment to find words, then awkwardly held out a little twined package.

“Got a spare sandwich on accident,” he said, a kind of peace offering. “Thought you might like it.”

“Okay,” she said, taking the sandwich. The paper was labeled with _steak and mustard_ on top. Joel never got mustard on his sandwiches. “Thanks.”

“How’re things going over here?” he asked, slipping his hands into his pockets. 

With his gaze downcast, she could see that he had a sunburn on his neck. 

“They’re fine,” she said, nodding. “No pest problem, thankfully.”

“Yeah, I remember how bad it was last year.”

“Yeah, so bad.”

Though she didn’t know what to make of the sandwich, her mouth watered, the thing still warm in her hands. Because Cat and Kaya were both vegetarians, Tess hadn’t had meat in a long time, maybe a month. The last time she had steak, she’d been trying to drink a couple of stablehands under the table, the Bison full of rowdy folks, armwrestling on the bar, whiskey-thick laughter; she’d thrown up in the bushes that night, then cursed herself for wasting the meat. Oh, she really wanted to eat this sandwich, and to not think about why Joel had ordered a steak sandwich with mustard when he never ordered mustard on his sandwiches.

“Hey,” he said, as if he’d suddenly had an idea, “I was thinking. Maybe we could have dinner together sometime.”

She smiled halfheartedly. He wasn’t a very good actor.

“Sometime?” she asked, already knowing what he would say.

“Tomorrow night, maybe,” he said. “I can make your favorite.”

“My favorite, huh,” she said. Suddenly, she struggled to think things through logically, so she couldn’t decide if dinner with him would be fine or if this was a very, very bad idea.

“Yeah,” he said, shifting his weight, waiting for an answer.

For dinner tomorrow night, Kaya wanted to make ravioli with some nice goat cheese, and afterward, Cat wanted to watch Saw II again. Tess had said she would bring home spinach, and raspberries too. While he spent his time alone in that too-big house, she found her way to others, and now, she had an obligation to this new family of sorts, Ellie’s ex-girlfriend, a pilot whose hair Tess loved to braid, and Eugene, the only person who could drink more than Tess could. If she left them for one night, would they be upset? But no, Joel was her husband, and they all - well, not Eugene, but she couldn’t blame him for that - knew that she and Joel had gone through some tough times. Tough times? Not tough times, but she couldn’t explain what had happened to anyone else, for she couldn’t tell anyone about her immunity, about Ellie’s, or about what had happened in Salt Lake City, the fate of the world resting on a little girl’s shoulders. Though she’d thought about talking to Maria again, she felt that Maria was off-limits, too close to Joel and too aloof for big emotions, so Tess had been alone in her grief. At least Kaya had listened to Tess’s half-finished sentences in those first few weeks, then told Tess everyone would be alright even though Kaya herself had had no idea what had happened. At least Kaya had understood what Tess couldn’t say.

But if she left Kaya, Cat, and Eugene for one night, they would understand. They might even be happy to know where she’d gone instead. And when she met his gaze, she felt her heart pound, her chest almost aching at the look of him. He hadn’t had a haircut, for she’d always been the one to give him a trim, and she knew that no one would have offered him a notebook, that he wouldn’t have known where to begin had he decided to write his thoughts down. Back in the QZ, she’d seen him like this, exhaustion deep in his bones, the grief all-consuming. She loved him, and that grief was a part of him, so she loved his grief too, in whatever way she could. And she thought that saying no would be painful for both of them, and that that pain wouldn’t be productive in the end.

“Okay,” she said, nodding for her own personal confirmation. _Yes, I will have dinner with Joel. I am going to have dinner with Joel._ “Yeah, okay.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding too. “Seven?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’ll see you then.”

“Yeah.”

“Would you mind bringing over some basil?”

Oh, okay, she could handle basil. She knew basil well, and they had plenty of basil in the gardens, absolutely tons of the stuff, she could lead him over there and show him if he so desired.

“If you’ve got time, I can give you some now,” she offered, and yes, he’d love some now, and she knew he had a little mesh bag in his pack because she’d forced him to put it there, and she should give him some garlic too, maybe some onions. Had there been onions in the basket yesterday? Oh, and he’d returned the basket, she could see the one she’d given him in the pile they kept near the shed, and she went to pick some basil for him, put the leaves into the mesh bag he held out for her. Garlic bulbs, onions, yes, plenty for a nice dinner. Did he need tomatoes? No, she’d given him plenty of tomatoes. Now, all he needed was for her to show up.

On his way out, he thanked her, then headed toward the house. The steak sandwich smelled divine. She found a spot to sit at the edge of the gardens and unwrapped the paper, steak and lettuce and tomatoes, honey mustard on toasted slices of bread. Just the way she liked it, and not at all the way he liked his own.

Maybe having dinner together was a good idea.


	20. Your Own Bed

“But it’s not _just dinner._ ”

Tess sighed. “Yeah, probably not.”

Kaya had a really nice mattress, a queen-size too. Resting her head on one of the two pillows, Tess wondered if she ought to learn about electronics so that the settlement would spoil her like this, but then again, she’d given up a nice, big bed with flannel sheets and warm blankets for a twin-size in a house far away from downtown. Maybe learning to rewire wouldn’t help.

“Are you prepared for that?” Kaya asked, on her side and facing Tess. Her hair was so long that her braid went from her pillow to Tess’s, but Tess didn’t mind.

Tess shrugged. “As best I can be.”

“He’s going to have questions,” Kaya gave. “A lot of them. He’s had time to let them fester. Three months.”

“He’s probably forgotten everything at this point,” Tess said, though she didn’t believe that at all. Still, if she spoke those words aloud, then maybe they would become true, so she might as well try. “And he wasn’t really interested to begin with.”

“So you assume he hasn’t gone through every last conversation with a fine-toothed comb,” Kaya said, disbelieving, “and you assume he hasn’t come up with every worst case scenario there is to find.”

Tess closed her eyes in annoyance. She had a journal chock-full of thought-spirals that inevitably came to the conclusion that it all had been fake, every year after Boston, for she didn’t delve into Boston, when they both wore their broken hearts on their sleeves, when they were painfully honest because anything else would get them killed. And though he’d shut down and pushed her away before she left, she knew he would do the same, paralyzing himself with assumptions, thinking she had left because he was broken, he was awful, he wasn’t worth her time. She wished she could tell him that he was wrong, but she didn’t want to be presumptuous, and she doubted he would believe her anyway.

“Did you ever tell him about the miscarriage?” Kaya asked, but she looked at her nails as she spoke, only half-invested for the moment. Tess wondered if Kaya had purposefully put up a casual facade.

“No,” Tess gave. “I haven’t spoken to him since he cut up his leg.”

“Didn’t take out his stitches?”

“I think Maria did.”

“So, no contact whatsoever?”

For a moment, Tess thought about telling Kaya that Joel had come to their window every night since the construction across town had started, but no, she wanted his visits to be secret. And she wondered if he’d intended to walk up the front steps and knock twice, seeking her out, but had grown nervous and decided to try again tomorrow night, those _tomorrow nights_ extending indefinitely. Then again, she’d seen him every time, so she wondered why she hadn’t acknowledged him until this week, and then why she hadn’t gone to the front door and offered to let him in.

“None whatsoever,” she gave, though those words felt like a lie.

“What’re you going to tell him, then?” Kaya said. “When he asks.”

Truthfully, Tess hadn’t thought about what she would say. She’d thought about how she would tell him that she wouldn’t be coming home, and she’d thought about whether or not she would acknowledge him tonight when he came by her window before dinner - he hadn’t, for the first time he hadn’t - and she’d thought about what to bring with her to dinner, maybe bread, maybe her sewing notions in case there were rips in his clothes, but she hadn’t thought about what she would say if he asked her about their last morning. Why hadn’t she thought about those questions? After all, he’d asked her for the truth about that last morning right before she left him, and though she wished he hadn’t, she knew that he must’ve thought through that conversation so many times, trying to figure out what silent cue he’d missed, and he would want to know. He would want to know, and she wouldn’t know what to say.

It would be easier to be honest if she knew how she felt. When she told Kaya, she hadn’t even used the word _miscarriage,_ and mostly, she believed she’d just had a late period, but she knew Joel would think differently. And she knew he didn’t want children, absolutely not, and he knew how she felt about such things, so had she been honest with him, they both would have mourned the great shift in their lives, then been relieved by a miscarriage. Still, she found herself thinking about those days all too often, not because they upset her but because she’d felt so much and had had no one to talk to about those emotions. While Joel went through two normal weeks, she found her hands shaking in the garden, not wanting this to be true, not wanting to tell anyone, wishing it all would just _go away,_ and she wished she’d had someone who loved her in those moments. She wished someone had been there to ease her pain. Instead, he came home in his sullen, shut-down state, and she pretended she was fine. The miscarriage paled in comparison to the fear she’d felt during those two weeks, and she wanted a witness to that fear, for there was no worse feeling than that of being alone in the world. 

And part of her wished she’d told him, just so that she could hear him say the words she’d imagined. That he loved her. That they were in this together. That he would do anything for her, even put a bullet through her skull if she so desired. Thinking those things, she felt childish, girlish, immature, but she wanted his conviction. She wanted him to be brave for her when she couldn’t be. She wanted him to prove to her that all of her fears had been unfounded, and instead, this could be a good thing, and he was scared too, he was so fucking scared, but he had faith that they could survive this challenge. He had faith in them, for there was nothing else left for him to have faith in. And in the end, she would still feel the same way, scared and not wanting this at all, but she would know that he didn’t want her to be afraid, and that he would make her chicken soup again, and she would come home to someone who loved her, so life wouldn’t be so bad after all.

But she knew better than to expect that reaction, and because she knew better, she wasn’t sure what she would tell him. _It was nothing,_ she thought, for that was what it was, but she wished she could think of something else to tell him. She wished she knew how she really felt.

“The truth, I guess,” Tess gave, but she had little faith in that answer.

“And you’ll tell him the truth when he asks you to go back again?”

Tess sighed, for she didn’t know the answer to that either. Though she didn’t want to return to that house, at least not yet, she didn’t know if she would eventually change her mind. She wished the answers were easy, but right now, she liked coming home each evening and having dinner with this new family. Against all odds, she was, for the most part, happy, and she didn’t want to ruin the happiness she’d found. She knew that this world was full of pain; she shouldn't create more.

“Yeah, if I ever figure out what that is,” Tess gave. 

“Do you miss him?”

She missed the idea of him. She missed how they used to lie to each other. She missed how she would stay late in the gardens, then hear him distantly playing guitar on their porch, the gardens close enough to their home for the sound to beckon her home, tell her that the day was done. And she would take that short walk home, find him on the porch, and he would look up at her, fingers relaxing against the frets, and he would ask her how her day had been, there’s a frost coming, did she get everything covered? And yes, she did, and she was too tired to cook, so leftovers tonight, or something easy. They would sit together at the kitchen table and eat, and the conversation felt so easy, so simple, and because they both needed to relax, they would pop in a tape and sit on the couch, huddled beneath the same blanket as always. Sometimes, she would fall asleep against him on purpose, for she loved the feeling of being half-awake while he carried her upstairs and tucked her in. If he ever loved her, then he loved her in those moments, gently setting her down on her side of the bed, pulling the blankets up over her. If he ever loved her, he only did so when he thought she couldn’t tell.

“I do,” she said, confident in her answer for the first time.

“Well, then,” Kaya gave. “What else do you need to know?”

Tess sighed. There were plenty of other things she needed to know. And part of her hated having to ask these questions at all, for back in the QZ, these questions would never have been asked. She missed their little arrangement. She missed sleeping next to someone she swore she didn’t have feelings for. She missed sex that lacked emotional consequences. And she could remember so clearly how it felt to speak to him in the capitol building, the uncomfortable yearning, that wish for something she would never have, but then again, she’d started wishing before they found the dead Fireflies. As they went through downtown, she asked him if they could take it easy for a while, and _easy_ meant more than just a few days of rest, trading more cards than they should for fresh food, staying indoors while gunfire sounded outside. And he’d wanted to take it easy for a while too, had wanted to since long before they met Ellie. In a way, she wished for that timeline of events, letting the girl go and then retreating to their shitty Boston apartment, and they would still be survivors, doing shitty things so that they would stay warm and fed, fearing each winter that they would freeze to death in each other’s arms, clinging for warmth and maybe something unspoken and _more._ Under duress, their life together felt infinitely romantic, a Shakespearean tragedy, and whispers of _another lifetime, in another world,_ some other universe would have been beautiful and bountiful for them, but not this one. Not this one. And their bodies would rot for days, then be thrust over the walls of the QZ, decomposing in the overgrowth of the Outsides, people trying to sneak into the QZ wondering why this pair had died, and really, it had been infection, or the cold, or a gunshot not intended to hit them, or a gunshot aimed precisely at their foreheads. They would hold steadfast to their tragedy. _More_ would always be beyond their reach.

But now, they lived in a way that meant their problems were so small. She cared about his feelings, purely emotional parts of him, parts that lacked life-or-death consequences and defied logic. And she needed to defend her own happiness, as stupid as that sounded. Electricity, fresh food, friends and warmth and a comfortable place to sleep at night, she felt soft and dumb for having any problems at all. But weren’t these small problems the point of this settlement? Had the people living here wanted to care about survival, they would have gone elsewhere, joined other groups, lived in an abandoned house outside of a Zone, foraging for what they could and wondering which meal would be their last. Everyone who lived here had wanted comfort. They’d wanted ease. And power outages, hordes beyond the walls, everyone knew that this place might be fleeting and momentary, soon enough just a memory, but they all fought to keep these small problems, to bring back the humanity of giving a damn. Though she felt childish for having these problems, in a way she craved them too, wanted a chance to put herself first, wanted to be a person worth knowing. Still, she thought of dinner with Joel and wondered what the woman she’d been six or seven years ago would’ve said. _A wedding? There isn’t even a legal aspect anymore. What’s the point of that? And why not just use him for creature comforts? Why not just ignore him and wait for the problem to go away?_

Kaya nudged Tess’s calf with her knee.

“It’s late. Go to bed,” Kaya said, then added, “your own bed.”

Tess sighed. “But yours is much more comfortable.”

“It’s especially comfortable when I’m the only one in it.”

“Fine.”

So Tess got up, and Kaya promptly spread out, feet at one corner of the mattress and her head at another, her body going diagonal. 

“Get some sleep,” Kaya said, curling up with the pillow Tess had used. “And try to stop thinking for once.”

* * *

He’d cleaned the house. The couch no longer looked slept-on. In trying to find a nice shirt, he’d separated out the ones he’d worn holes in, holes he never would’ve noticed before because she would’ve mended them. After the construction broke, he started his walk around town without thinking, without remembering that she would eat dinner with him, not at the blue house, so the window was pointless, and he needed to get home. He needed to start on dinner. But he didn’t want to pass her in the gardens, so he detoured toward Tommy and Maria’s, Tommy still at the construction site but Maria opening the front door and letting him come in. _The downstairs is a mess,_ she’d said, _we’ve been so busy,_ and he then realized that he needed to clean his house.

Truthfully, he’d wanted Maria’s advice, but he didn’t know how to ask for such a thing, so he presented the situation in objective, unemotional terms, let Maria fill in the gaps. And really, Maria hadn’t been much help - she told him to _show her he cares,_ as if that wasn’t vague - but she’d mentioned offhandedly that he should dress up. _Dress up?_ he asked, thinking of Tess wearing a graphic tee shirt to town meetings, an old sweatshirt to the bar. Tonight, he figured Tess would still be wearing shorts, and if her legs weren’t caked with dirt, then he would wonder if she'd actually gone to the gardens at all. Maria furrowed her brow, so Joel reminded her that she’d been the one to force Tess to wear a dress when they got married, but Maria shook her head. No, she hadn’t forced Tess into anything. That had been Maria's Midsummer dress, a kind of family heirloom, one that barely fit anymore. Years before the outbreak, back when Maria was still a teenager, her mother had made her that dress, the embroidery done by hand, and if they were lucky enough to be in Sweden for the holiday, she would pair the dress with a flower crown, and May Pole dances, and Joel didn’t really understand any of this - she spoke such words with a mild accent, he couldn’t spell any of it if he tried - but Maria pointed out the pictures on the wall, pictures of her and Tommy holding hands in the church, their wedding ceremony. And Maria had been wearing pants and a casual shirt.

“She asked if I had a dress she could borrow,” Maria said. “And I think she came to regret that eventually. I couldn’t really figure her out. Maybe she felt a kind of obligation toward it. Had I not had something on-hand, I doubt she would’ve gone looking. And I absolutely didn’t force her.”

While cleaning the house, he thought about that dress. He pictured it on the easy chair in their bedroom, draped carefully over top, and she stood next to the bed in the darkness, waiting for him. Maybe he had her figured out. Maybe she wanted to be someone in a white dress despite who she knew she was, but no, that wasn't it. Maybe she wanted this all to feel real, concrete, comparable. Though she’d complained to him about that dress, she’d still worn it voluntarily, and yes, there must’ve been some obligation. Had the dress not been white - and not been simple and arguably casual enough - she would’ve worn the same clothes she wore every day, but Maria had a white dress, a textbook perfect white dress, and there was no reason to say no. Except that there were so many reasons to say no. What was the point of a white dress? In some cultures, white was the color of mourning; she could’ve worn something else, almost anything else. But he’d worn that ugly tie. He’d done the same thing. Why that tie? He’d gone around town asking if anyone had something to spare. He couldn’t even remember from whom he’d borrowed it. And the one picture she wanted, the one of her trying to undo the knot on his wretched tie. He wondered who they’d performed for, given that they hadn’t done such things for each other or for themselves. Not for the crowd, absolutely not, but then for whom?

But she’d dressed up once before, so, his best shirt, and socks that didn’t have holes in the toes. He asked Maria to trim his hair because he hadn’t had it cut since Tess left, and he even asked to borrow one of her tablecloths. Had he known where to find candles, he would’ve lit some on the center of the dining room table, then dimmed the lights. Had he known how to, he would’ve done everything right.

When she came in, she apologized for being late - he hadn’t checked the clock - and she rubbed the sweat from her forehead, and she’d tied her hair back in a braid, so uncharacteristic, not the way she looked when he thought of her. Though he’d seen her headband plenty of times, she wore a tank top he didn’t recognize, and after setting her pack down in the same place she used to always leave it by the door, she held out a baguette for him, her two hands gripping the base while his took to the top. This afternoon, he’d picked up bread, but he wouldn’t tell her that, instead headed into the kitchen while she unlaced her boots and nudged his own loaf into the freezer, where she - and maybe even he himself - would never find it. Cutting board, bread knife. He ought to make another cutting board. For the past few months, he hadn’t carved much, instead had taken to sanding down half-finished projects while he listened to the radio, but he ought to start a new project, if only for the momentary excitement. Maybe he could make a cutting board, and then, he would reach for that one first, not this old one, and the wood would be almost soft to the touch, vegetables against the surface, neat little cuts with a sharp knife. Oh, and he needed to sharpen the knives. He hadn’t been cooking much, so he’d forgotten to sharpen the knives.

He was starting to get sidetracked. The bread had thrown him off. Now, the oven. Opening it up, he winced at the hot air - maybe baking in the summer hadn’t been his best idea - and ten more minutes, and then, he could get dinner on the table, which he’d already set. They would use matching plates tonight, and because she hated when he didn’t, he would put the pan down on a trivet. Though he had some honey mead from Tommy in the kitchen, he didn’t want them to be drunk tonight, so he’d put an old bottle full of water into the fridge, had even taken one of Tess’s fabric scraps from the workshop and wrapped it around the bottle’s neck, trying to be festive. 

“Smells good,” she said, and he turned around to find her leaning against the kitchen doorway, looking casual, looking the way she always did when she still lived here. But she held tension in her shoulders, a tell he wouldn’t have noticed had her shirt had sleeves. Though she tried to hide it, she felt as nervous as he did. 

“Just a couple more minutes,” he gave, for as he looked at her now, he realized that ten minutes would stretch on in agony, and one of them would say something stupid, or neither of them would say anything at all, and everything would go wrong. No, two or three more minutes, and he went over to the cutting board, started cutting slices of baguette while she waited in the doorway, no windows between them anymore, instead a moderate distance, his back to her. 

She looked over at the windowsill, and though she couldn’t figure out why, she thought that that corner of the kitchen, with their little breakfast table, seemed lonely. Not knowing what else to do, she went over and sat down in the spot she usually took, and looking through the window, she saw Ellie’s garage, the lights off. Sometimes, she saw Ellie in town, picking up barbecue or groceries, and Ellie wouldn’t look at her, would pass by as if they’d never met. 

“Want to turn the radio on?” he asked, and when he looked toward her, he stilled for a moment, not realizing where she’d sat down.

Though she didn’t want to listen to anything, she nodded anyway, and he went into the other room, turned on the stereo, always tuned to the same frequency. She’d forgotten that, at seven every night, KJAX now aired a bedtime story for the children around town. Maria’s idea, or so she assumed, along with the history hour on Sunday mornings - to Tess’s chagrin, Kaya really loved that one - and the Spanish lessons on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays around lunchtime. At least the programming had broadened from 80s synth pop and Rick Astley played without a hint of irony.

She wondered who read the bedtime story. Every night, the same woman spoke, and she introduced herself with a storybook kind of name, like _Miss Felicity_ or something, maybe meant to be a kind of settlement Santa Claus. And she had a voice like one out of a classic film, Ingrid Bergman reading from _Charlotte’s Web,_ a story to follow along with instead of a picture book read in a matter of minutes. She wondered if the children around town were huddled in bed with their parents right now, listening intently about what Wilbur and Charlotte would do at the fair, and how Charlotte’s webs made him the best pig there was. Oh, that was sweet. She hadn’t remembered this story being bittersweet. Looking out the window, she stilled when she noticed Ellie coming home, and the woman on the radio told of how Charlotte knew she would die soon - that part was implied, but Tess knew - and Ellie unlocked the front door of the garage using the key Joel had given her years ago, when they first moved into this place. And he’d put in a whole system of pipes and everything, giving Ellie running water years before they had their own, and though Ellie could’ve done so herself with greater ease, Tess and Joel used to always wash the girl’s clothes, then hang everyone’s things to dry on the line, variations in size and color, Tess’s sweater next to Ellie’s, the shoulders on Tess’s shirts much smaller than the shoulders on Joel’s. In the summer months, when they could hang the clothes outside, the line ended up so full, socks wedged in by shirtsleeves, clothespins almost overlapping, but this summer, Joel didn’t have Ellie’s clothes to hang on the line anymore, and Tess and Kaya hung theirs together in the backyard of the blue house. She wondered if his clothes looked lonely up on that now-empty line.

With the chapter over, the storyteller signed off for the night, and up next, a song about love, because there wasn’t any other kind.

* * *

At least they could talk. At least he could ask her certain things and have her respond in a way that didn’t feel forced and awkward. How were the gardens? Oh, this season was the best of the year, and he said yeah, I had some of last year’s jam and thought about how there’ll be fresh stuff soon, and she lamented that no one seemed to be returning their cans this year, she would have to give an announcement at the next town meeting. They both sighed. _Town meetings._ Though they liked the people in this settlement, they had seen time and time again how town meetings brought out the worst in people. Everyone would be stuck in the church for hours on end, some asshole going on about chickens crossing into his lawn, and, hey, they roamed free, alright? And you try corralling a chicken. They’re hard to catch. You have to reach out and bear-hug them, and they’re shaped all weird. Might as well let the chicken be. 

“So I’ll have to sit through an entire conversation on lengths of time people spend showering just so I can say, give me your goddamn cans,” Tess said, shaking her head. “Not my idea of a good night.”

“Bring a flask,” he said, toying with the last bit on his plate. He’d been too nervous to enjoy the meal, but now, as the meal came to a close, he felt too nervous to let the meal end either. “Or make Maria do it.”

Tess’s smile faded, and he cursed himself, no, wrong topic, bad topic. Maria had alluded to some falling-out between them, but Maria wasn’t the type to give specifics, and Tess quickly composed herself, not wanting to let on to a problem. And maybe Tess had deemed Maria too close to Joel and therefore out of bounds, so Tess couldn’t ask, even though months ago asking Maria would have been her can wingman.

“Yeah, maybe,” Tess gave, letting the topic go.

Her plate was empty. If he didn’t take one last bite, she would get suspicious, so he forced himself to swallow. As if this were a normal night, she reached out for both of their plates, slipping silverware on top, intending to do the dishes, but he put his hand over top, no, not yet. He couldn’t let her do the dishes, for if she did the dishes, then she would check the clock in the kitchen and say _it’s getting late, I have a long walk home_ and head into the entryway, where she would start lacing her boots while saying _this was nice, thank you for cooking,_ and before he could say something, say anything, ask her to stay, tell her what he wanted to tell her, she would be gone. No, he needed to interrupt her. He needed to stop her. Not the dishes, not yet. Across from him, she looked on uncomfortably, but he needed to do this now. Though he wanted five more minutes to prepare himself, he knew that he needed to do this now.

“I have some things written down,” he said, and he fumbled in his pocket, missing the folded-up piece of paper, cursing himself. When he scratched out and rewrote his speech this morning, he’d assumed that having a script would make this easier, but instead, he had sweat on his brow, and across from him, Tess stared down at her plate, trying to avoid him. Unfolding the paper, he stared down at what now felt incomprehensible and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry that this feels so unnatural.”

“No, it’s alright,” she said, nodding, but he didn’t believe her.

He knew what he wanted to say. This morning, he’d purposefully written down the exact sentences he wished to say to her. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to read what he’d written, then started to speak.

“I want you to come home,” he said, and because he knew she wanted to interject, he forced onward. “I want you to come home. I miss you. I miss everything. I…”

No, he was off-script already, he needed to dial himself back in.

“I want you to come home,” he repeated, “but I don’t know if that’s something you want. And if there is anything I can do that would make you come home, I will do it. I will do anything you ask. If that’s not something you want, then I accept your decision, but I want to know your intentions, and I want you to know mine.”

He reached into his pocket for a pen, then uncapped the pen. Staring down at the cap, he figured he must’ve stolen this one from Tommy and Maria, for there were chewmarks in the plastic.

Across from him, she stared down at his paper, the written and rewritten speech that he’d intended to have greater impact. Now, he looked like a fool. Was she pitying him? It was better not knowing. Why hadn’t he let this go? Then, he could’ve told himself whichever lie he wanted, and he could believe that, say, she fell in love with someone else, or she found one of her brothers and wished to live with family instead, or something that meant they could never be together in some bittersweet, lovely way. Star-crossed lovers, that kind of story, and he could lie to himself endlessly and never be burdened with knowing her true feelings. He shouldn’t have asked. He really shouldn’t have asked. He shouldn’t have-

“What’s the pen for?” she asked, not looking up at him.

Staring incredulously, he wondered for a moment if she’d made a joke, but when he figured she hadn’t, he said, “To write it down.”

“Write what down?”

“What you need me to do.”

She furrowed her brow, almost wincing.

“Oh,” she said uncomfortably.

He wondered if she could hear his heartbeat, or the blood rushing in his head. He wondered if she could tell how much he was sweating.

“I want to know about Salt Lake City,” she said, meeting his gaze and nodding twice, almost babying him. He’d expected her to mention Salt Lake City, but he hadn’t expected her to say this so kindly. “And there’s more, but I don’t know what. I need some time to think.”

“Okay,” he said quickly, and he went to write down _Salt Lake City,_ but she reached out for his hand, stopped him. Her fingers had callused in the gardens, same as they did every summer. The last time he felt her hands, it had still been winter, the pads of her fingers soft from the salve she used to keep her knuckles from cracking. Had she been here all along, he wouldn’t have noticed the change.

And for a moment, he didn’t know what she wanted him to do. She looked down at their hands together while he stared at her and waited for some kind of command. Maybe she wanted to save him from embarrassment, but then again, he felt beyond embarrassment now, and though tomorrow he would go over in painstaking detail every last bit of this conversation, for now his mind was too full to analyze the situation. 

She tilted her head toward the doorway, then stood up. 

“I have time to talk,” she gave, but this wasn’t an invitation so much as a command; uncomfortably, he went to follow her, but no, the dishes. The dishes. He needed to wash the dishes, and put the leftovers away, and clean the cutting board. There were things he needed to do first.

“I’ll meet you there in a minute,” he said, then took the plates and ducked into the kitchen, swearing that he didn’t mean to stall.

* * *

Sitting on the living room couch, hands folded on her lap, she had a staring contest with the photograph on the shelves. He’d found a new frame somewhere. After that night, she’d wondered what kind of damage had been done, the glass shattered but the frame potentially surviving. But no, he’d found a new frame, and now, the photograph sported a crease from top to bottom. Though the crease only went over a blurred bit of the background, centered but not intersecting them, she looked at the imperfection and felt that cowering, too-warm guilt. She shouldn’t have done that.

She didn’t regret it, not really. At the time, she’d thought of how she could leave this house and have no trace of their life together be left behind. Had she died in the capitol building, would mice and crows have feasted on her body? Marble floors, she wouldn’t end up in the soil, not unless someone - or, more likely, something - moved her, and because the fungus needed a living host in order to reproduce, she wouldn’t even look infected, save for the bite. She wondered if travelers might pick their way through her backpack, find her driver’s license and ration cards, taking her QZ papers so that they could create a new life out of this one dead Teresa Baker, resident of North Carolina, organ donor, under twenty-one until a year the world forgot to count. She wondered if someone might take her backpack, for unlike her clothes, that would come in handy, and didn’t have any holes either. She wondered if someone might unlace her boots and take those, leaving the feet of her corpse bare and confusing for the next scavenger. She wondered if anyone would want to remember her.

He’d asked about rings, old sap. And she hadn’t wanted one, not in the traditional sense, but when he called her unreasonable, she wished she had one. She wished for something physical that they both possessed, a talisman, a universal symbol, and she wanted to hold that symbol out for him and demand an explanation. But they hadn’t had items that proved a marriage, or even a bond at all, so if she left the house that night, then nothing she left behind would say that this was where Joel and Tess had lived, and they had cared about each other, and in this world of terror, they’d found solace in one another, at first in a quarantine zone and now in a settlement, the closest thing to _real life_ that they’d experienced since the outbreak began. Instead, there would be a woman’s clothes in Joel’s closet, and a couple of books that wouldn’t fit Joel’s taste, and she would be yet another of his untold stories, something small and hard to notice, something he would cover up. And then, their one wedding picture on the shelves. It had been right in front of her, and she wanted to smash it, so she smashed it. She hadn’t even had time to consider that he would watch. 

And now, a new frame, and all that remained of her pain was a crease. Though she felt guilty for ruining the photograph, she didn’t regret breaking the frame. After all, he’d gone quiet as glass shattered on their floor, and she had spoken with conviction afterward, forcing him to listen this time. She didn’t like ruining things, but some things were only true when ruined.

She heard the sink shut off. He’d finished with the dishes. She hadn’t meant to push him tonight, but once he asked what she wanted, she couldn’t let Salt Lake City go. And the more she thought about it, the more she found that there wasn’t another solid topic she could think of, and instead, her wariness around him remained as a feeling, just a feeling. How could she tell him that she would come home when things felt right again? Now she did feel unreasonable, hearing him ask for exact actions to take and not being able to give him a list. But they could start with Salt Lake City. He was coming into the living room now. They could at least start here.

He looked older now. She wondered if he’d had streaks of grey in his hair when she left him, but no, his hair had been longer two days ago. Sometime between then and now, he’d had a haircut, probably one from Maria. As he sat down beside her on the couch, she tried to count back the years to when she first cut his hair, but he spoke before she could find a number.

“You wanted to know about Salt Lake City,” he said, as if she needed reminding.

Palms resting on his thighs, he hunched over a little, facing the windows, his cheek to her. She didn’t know if she should prompt him, so she let a silence come between them, enough to push him forward.

“There’s not much to tell,” he said, looking down. “I found her outside of the hospital. I don’t know what she saw inside, but she saw enough.”

Tess had figured out that much already, but for the first time, she pictured that hospital in a different way. For some reason, she hadn’t imagined carnage when he first told her of his escape with Ellie. Blood, yes, and guns firing, and racing out and praying they would stay alive, but not carnage. Now, the place would reek of rot, metallic smells like the ones in the Boston QZ, and there would be remnants, a car crash in a snowstorm, silent but telling, signs that something terrible had happened here. She wondered what Ellie had seen in those halls. Had the girl seen carnage, or had she seen a fight for her own life? And for a moment, Tess imagined herself in those halls, and she’d been the one saved, not Ellie. Would she change her mind and hate Joel too?

“She confronted me about what she’d seen,” Joel said, and looking at him now, he seemed so much older than the man she’d known. He seemed so tired. Part of her wanted to ask him to stop talking, and she would take him upstairs and tuck him into the bed she knew he didn’t sleep in, and she would open up a book. She would tell him a story as if he were a little boy, and it would be her voice crackling on through his radio, and she would run her fingers through his hair and promise that things would be alright even though they wouldn’t. 

She didn’t know how to love someone so determined to push her away, for she would always come back to him whether or not he wanted to let her in, and that loyalty was a flaw of hers, a stupid, incessant flaw. But, she reminded herself, he was taking a deep breath, finding the right words now. He was telling her about Salt Lake City, and though part of her wondered why he hadn’t told her months ago, back when they’d fought so much, she could see the tension in his shoulders, and he leaned forward as if his back hurt, a long day at work, and he needed rest. He wanted to tell her. Damn the pain, the exhaustion, all the feelings she’d forced him to bring up; he wanted to tell her now, and she felt almost solemn as she started to understand.

“I couldn’t lie to her anymore,” he said, “not because I didn’t try, but because she knew. I think she’s known all along, but then, she really knew, and she said that she would only come back with me if I told her the truth.”

His breaths grew shallower. Suddenly, she wanted him to stop.

“So I told her the truth,” he said, his voice cracking, and she ached for him, physically ached. No, he didn’t need to do this anymore. She understood. He could stop now. She understood. “And she told me that we were through.”

Against her better judgment, she reached out, touched his thigh, trying to offer comfort, but what comfort could she give him? He flinched against her touch, and, right, this was Joel, and she needed to tiptoe around his pain, and he hated her for that but wanted her to do the same nonetheless. And she wished she knew how to love him. She wished she knew what he wanted her to do, but instead, she’d learned how to love secondhand, movies and books and trying to make sense of her brothers’ girlfriends teaching her what the proper way to do _this_ was. She hadn’t been taught about adult feelings. She didn’t know where to begin with how he felt.

He covered his face with his hands, and she stilled alongside him. He needed to take a deep breath. He needed to ground himself, and then, she would get up and leave, and they would continue this conversation tomorrow, or maybe the day after that. She wished she hadn’t asked. She wished she’d let him write _Salt Lake City_ down and then added two more pointless topics for good measure, giving him halfhearted guidance. She wished-

She knew what a sob looked like. He was crying. Had she ever seen him cry before? Yes, when she learned about Sarah, right after Tommy left, and back then, he’d kept himself so contained, the tears reluctantly falling while a vein in his forehead bulged. But now, he couldn’t put up a facade any longer, and she stared on as he crumbled before, that awful feeling of losing control, being taken over by one’s emotions. And she brought her arms around him and felt struck by how her stomach turned, and her hands were shaking, and her eyes stung with tears, and this pain was hers too, not because Ellie had abandoned her as well but because she would always share his pain. This time, he let himself be held, even reached out to bring her closer, his head against her shoulder, one of her hands in his hair. _It’s okay,_ she whispered, lips close to his ear. _It’s okay._

She hoped he didn’t know that she was crying too.

* * *

With the windows open, the bedroom managed a breeze, but still, he kicked off the blanket, could only tolerate the sheet. He hadn’t slept in this bed in a long time, and though the tension in his back had started to wane, his knees no longer aching as he tried to sleep, he stared up at the ceiling and wished he could be downstairs instead. At least the pain of the couch kept him up for a clear reason. In the bedroom, he found his mind too full, the place reminding him of her, and he preferred bent knees and uncomfortable cushions to missing her.

But she wanted the couch, and though he insisted that she take the bed, she said no, no, she would take the couch. With the blue house being all the way across town, she ought not to walk home late at night, so she asked to take the couch, and after she refused the bed a few times, he let her, giving her the clean flannel sheets because the cotton ones were upstairs, not mentioning where the spare blankets were kept because she already knew, had probably put them there herself. After giving her the sheets, he stood awkwardly in front of the stairs, not knowing if he should say goodnight, not wanting to stare down the bed, but when she started putting the sheets over the couch cushions, he forced himself upstairs in silence. She just needed a place to stay for the night. She didn’t mean anything else.

He wished he hadn’t cried. Just thinking about crying in front of her made him wince, his cheeks growing hot and even his ribs aching with the embarrassment. And he shouldn’t have let her hold him either, but she’d felt so good against him, so right, and she smelled like herself, and he missed her so much. He missed her so much, so when her arms came around him, he couldn’t help but collapse against her. Alongside him, she was so stable, so safe, and if he overlooked the pain and the inevitability, he could think of how she loved him and feel comforted. She loved him, so he could cry against her and not be judged. She loved him, so when she held him, she did so with care. 

But he wished he hadn’t cried. He felt stupid for crying. He should’ve had better control over himself, and he should’ve rehearsed what he would say, and-

He heard one of the boards on the stairs creak, and she cursed under her breath. She was coming upstairs.

When she came into the bedroom, he didn’t know what to do, so he leaned on his forearms and faced her. Looking down at him, she was doe-eyed, maybe not expecting to find him awake. Downstairs, she must’ve left her pants in a heap on the floor, right in the same spot where she broke the picture frame.

“Couch’s not that comfortable,” she conceded, and he nodded, then scooted back in bed, taking her side instead of his own. He’d never slept on this side before, and as she pulled back the sheet, he realized that she slept on the left side of her body while he slept on his right, so now, they would face each other as they slept.

She settled quickly, pulling the sheet around herself and then relaxing against the pillow. Because he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, he forcibly shut his eyes, the two of them facing each other but neither staring. And part of him wanted to reach for her, to hold her and run his fingers through her hair, act like this was any other night, and she’d come in late from helping Maria with the books, and he hadn’t seen her all day, and he wanted her close, but he knew better. No, he needed to keep to his own side, and he needed to stay still, and he couldn’t let her know that he was still awake, for then, she would ask why, and he didn’t want to tell her why. At first, he’d been awake because his mind and body wouldn’t quiet down, but now, he was awake because she was next to him again, and he’d forgotten these feelings enough for them to be enticing but remembered them enough that he wondered how he’d ever slept without her. The dip in the mattress, the warmth of her body, he could remember their first days in this house and how they both couldn’t sleep because they were too comfortable. Almost a whole year of traveling across the country, and they made beds in whichever houses they could clear, and they both woke at every bump in the night, looking at each other and then at the girl who slept soundly between them. A real mattress? He remembered how Tess had fallen back onto the bed, then laughed at the absurdity. As he joined her, she told him she’d never owned her own mattress before, then turned onto her stomach and asked him if he wanted to christen it. And he said no, not without sheets, and she rolled her eyes and said that _no sheets_ had never held them back before.

Though he felt too giddy to sleep, eventually he must’ve drifted off, for he woke in the morning not to the sound of the alarm but to her soft movements, light coming in through the windows, she tiptoed around the bedroom. She meant to leave before he woke up. At first, every step she took seemed calculated - he kept his eyes closed, trying to uphold his end of the charade - but eventually she stopped and stood in one place, shifting her weight between legs. He didn’t think she was looking at him. He wasn’t sure what she was doing. But eventually, he heard her leave the bedroom, then take the stairs slowly so that she wouldn’t step on a creaky board again, and a minute or two later, the front door opened and closed. Looking over at the alarm clock, he saw that he had fifteen more minutes to sleep, so he moved back to his side of the bed. The pillow smelled like her.

She didn't leave any traces behind. Had she stayed, he would’ve offered to make her breakfast, but instead, he cracked an egg over a pan of leftovers for himself. He needed the energy today. And when he brought his plate to the little table next to the kitchen window, he stilled before sitting down. His idiotic speech, left out for him. Had he left it there? No, he hadn’t, and he set his plate down, then picked up the paper. She’d written something.

_I want to see you again_

Without thinking, he smiled.

* * *

“What’re you doing?”

Shaken from her thoughts, Tess looked at Cat across the dining table. Ravioli and goat cheese, fresh tomatoes done up in a sauce Kaya had made. Because everything tasted great, she couldn’t figure out why she didn’t feel hungry.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Tess said, picking up her fork again, staring down at her plate.

Next to Cat, Kaya kept silent. Eugene would probably come home in an hour or two, staying out late and drinking at the end of the week. Though Tess had told Kaya the bare minimum - after all, she hadn’t come home last night - Kaya still didn’t know most of what had happened, and she looked inquisitively toward Tess, knowing that there was something more. And Tess was wearing one of Joel’s shirts, pilfered from the laundry pile this morning; Kaya surely wouldn’t let that go.

“You keep looking out the window,” Cat said. “Are you expecting someone?”

“I’m not,” Tess gave, then cut into her pasta, trying to look aloof. 

No, she wasn’t expecting someone. She’d known he wouldn’t come by tonight, but she kept looking over her shoulder, expecting to find him in the summer sunset beyond their windows, his body tense because he didn’t know if he should knock or run away. And she wondered if he wouldn’t come back again, making her reach for him this time. She wondered if, had she acknowledged him outside her window before, he would’ve stopped coming by sooner.

She promised herself that after dinner she would go to Cat’s room and ask for the wedding picture Cat had drawn, the one the girl had offered her months ago. This time, she wanted that to keep.


	21. Taking Things Slow

They’d meant to take things slow. In their defense, he didn’t know where to start in the first place, for they’d had sex before they first kissed, and they’d had no sequence of _bases_ to follow, instead going on some combination of primal and survival instincts. They’d intended to just have dinner, maybe watch a movie afterward, and he reached out for her hand, and she took it in hers, and they weren’t paying attention to what they had on the TV. With the windows open, they felt a bit too cold, so they canted toward each other, not because they wanted each other but because they were cold, and then, the wanting came from the closeness. He swore he wouldn’t kiss her first. No, she had walked out on him, so he would let her lead, that made sense, he would hold back, he would let her kiss him first, but he couldn’t finish that thought, for her hand was on his cheek, and he could see in her wide eyes exactly what she wanted. 

And then, they’d really only meant to kiss. Maybe some over-the-clothes action, closeness that felt familiar, her body over his on the couch, autumnal breezes through the house, television technicolor in the change-of-seasons darkness, their dishes still in the sink. He’d made pasta from scratch; she’d brought over one of her tomato sauce cans that hadn’t sealed properly. She wore a grey shirt he didn’t recognize, and she told him it was Kaya’s, but he wasn’t thinking of Kaya as he watched Tess finger the bottom hem of the shirt, pull it over her head and off, and the same bra he’d seen every day for years now. The same body that had traveled with him from Boston to here, the other side of the country, and they’d had their origins in some place in between, and he could feel goosebumps on her skin. They were both cold, and they both wanted to warm up. Had he not been dumbfounded, he would’ve carried her up the stairs, her feet picking up the dust on the railings, but instead, she led him up the steps, looking back at him to ask for permission she already had.

Her body against his. Maybe he’d fallen in love with their separation. Maybe he wanted her to leave for months at a time so that he could hold her this close again, his fingers running through her too-long hair, her knees bracketing his hips. When he started to come down from his high, he didn’t want to open his eyes. Their bed, but this time, she was on her side, or at least parts of her were, and his arms pulled her closer, right here, against him and real, so real. Not across town. His first coherent thought was a hope that she wouldn’t stand up and excuse herself, heading back to the blue house, enough for one night.

She didn’t leave. For a while, she stayed silent, her breath warm against his neck. He wondered if her mind felt full or blissfully empty like his. He thought he should say something, but no, the silence felt better, the house cold around them, their bodies warm together. For once, the silence felt right.

“Still got it, Texas,” she said, and he laughed against her, pulling her closer.

* * *

In the morning, he put the kettle on the stove, went into the cabinets to find the mint she’d hung and dried last year. He wanted to make her breakfast, but not just any breakfast, and had he expected her to stay over, he would’ve picked up brioche from the store, gotten creme fraiche to pair with eggs, topped it all off with chives chopped so, so thin, presenting the plate before her with gusto. But instead, he had boring food in the fridge, and because she only had a jacket to keep her warm, she put on the green sweater of his that she always used to borrow, and she stood alongside him in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, waiting on him. Annoyed and enamored with her impatience, he stuck his hand in the back pocket of her jeans, made her give him a look.

They hadn’t had breakfast together in months, so he served her at the table in their kitchen. He wanted this to be special.

“So,” he asked from across the table, “got any plans for the weekend?”

Tess shrugged, gave, “Getting drunk with Kaya, but not so drunk that I can’t steer her home.”

“You two are thick as thieves.”

“Hey, she needs a guide, and it’s not like I have anything better to do.”

And he wanted to think of something better to do, but the settlement had fallen into those awkward post-summer months, the parts of autumn without holidays. Though the season ought to make everyone in town gather for comfortable and warm indoor activities, instead everyone waited for Halloween, Thanksgiving - or, rather, what those born before the outbreak called _Thanksgiving_ and those born afterward called _Dinner_ with enunciation, and which Maria had moved to the second Friday in November because she found that date more convenient - and Christmas, or, more universally, October, November, and December. But in September now, the weather felt too cold to sit on the porch at night, and the leaves had only just started to change, so he wasn’t sure what to do other than put on a coat in the morning and take that coat off at midday. And he tried not to show his discomfort as he reasoned his way through asking her on - and the word hurt him to think - a date.

“Well, maybe,” he started, not knowing how to finish the sentence, “we could get together sometime.”

“Get together,” she deadpanned.

“You know,” he said, but he had a feeling that she didn’t know.

“Sex?”

He winced.

“No, not that,” he said, then clarified, “unless you wanted-”

“They’re playing the first _Lord of the Rings_ in the theater next week,” Tess said, then looked up at him, Kubrick stare, _I got you, old sap._

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Great.”

“You read the books?”

“‘Course I have.”

“I’ve never,” she gave, thankfully moving past his shoddy attempt to ask her out. “Made Kaya so mad. For the first time, she’s forcing me to read something that's not about the second World War.”

“You’re in for a treat, then,” he said. “First one’s a little slow, but after that, it really gets going.”

“I don’t really get the appeal.”

“The appeal?” he scoffed. “The appeal of the most celebrated books ever written.”

“Not sure that’s true,” she said, giving him a look.

“This man wrote an entire language,” he said, “and you don’t get the appeal.”

“No, I don’t.”

He smiled and shook his head. He had time to explain why she was wrong. They had plenty of time.

* * *

“Okay, I’m starting to get the appeal.”

Alongside her, he smiled smugly. Of course she got the appeal _now._

“Took you long enough,” he said, the two of them heading out of the theater, the night dark and chilly around them. He shrugged into his leather jacket, trying to keep warm.

“When’re they airing the next one?” she asked, but he shook his head, didn’t know. “Who else ends up dying?”

“I’m not gonna spoil that,” he said. “Nope, no way.”

They stood awkwardly outside of the theater, others in the settlement walking past, some waving, others rapt in conversation. In order to get home, he would have to walk in one direction, and she would walk in the other. He couldn’t tell if they were each stalling or looking to follow the other home.

“I’ll walk you home,” he said, trying to make her decisions easier. 

He doubted he alone could fit in her twin bed at the blue house, and he knew the route there anyway, had walked it for months in order to stare into her window for reasons he couldn’t explain. And really, he didn’t want the night to end, at least not yet, for he felt as if going their separate ways from the theater took something away from the night. No, he wanted to walk her home, and he would miss her if she said no.

“Okay,” she said, nodding, then headed in the direction of the blue house, her hands in the pockets of her jeans.

And he could see all of his same landmarks, the pride flag in one window, the dog in one backyard, but this time, he walked with her, not toward her. The last time he’d walked this way, she’d spotted him from the window, and he didn’t know what to do, or really why he’d gone to see her at all. He didn’t know why he’d started walking that way, though he assumed _wanting to see her_ was enough of a reason. And once she noticed him, he couldn’t go back, and it was better to seek her out instead, wasn’t it? If he were to walk by the blue house again, he would need to knock on the door, ask to be let in, and he didn't want to crowd her. He wanted all of this to be easy for her. He wanted her to come back because she wanted to come back, not because he wouldn’t go away.

Alongside him, she shivered, only wearing a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. Though the morning had been warm, September nights turned cold and dark and damp, so he held out his hand, slowed her down, then pulled his jacket from his shoulders, handed the garment to her. She looked on uncomfortably, but he tilted his head, _it’s no big deal,_ so she pulled the jacket on, even did up the zipper. 

“Thanks,” she said. “I was in the greenhouses all day. Hot as hell in there.”

“Your blood’s gone thin,” he gave, trying to chastise her and, in his opinion, failing.

“Speaking of,” she said, but the transition felt wrong, “I heard the construction wrapped.”

“Yeah, maybe a month ago.”

“What’ve you been up to since then?”

He shrugged, gave, “Home repairs, a couple new pipes in the houses.”

“Have you gone up to the dam?”

“Once or twice.”

“I’ve had to stay late,” she said, and though he felt as if she wanted him to mention something specific, admit to a quiet transgression, he couldn’t figure out what she wanted him to say. “Frosts and whatnot.”

“Usually, I’m home an hour or two after lunch,” he gave, and she nodded, so maybe he’d appeased her. 

At least now he had no excuse to leave the construction site and walk past the blue house. Should he end up on this side of town, he would be there either because Tess invited him or because he had a job somewhere. At least now he wasn’t some kicked puppy who tried to hide every time she looked out the kitchen window.

“You think Maria will have them show the second movie next week?” Tess asked.

And he didn’t think so, no, Maria would probably put on something _for the kids_ and make all of the adults wait to see what happened next, and maybe, the week after that, there would be a new reel to play, something never before seen in this new world, and Maria would say, why not that one? Come December, Tess would be done with reading the trilogy and would stare at Maria with a familiar face that said _don’t test my patience._

“Nope,” he gave, and she laughed alongside him, shook his head.

“Me neither,” she said, “but, you know, whenever they do.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” she gave, shrugging. “We can make a night out of it.”

“Oh, can we?” he asked, goading her.

“We could _not,_ ” she threw back, and he thought of his idiotic speech, and the note she’d left him on that same piece of paper. He kept the note in the drawer of his bedside table, and when she last slept over, he’d hoped she wouldn’t find it, but he couldn’t bear to burn it, rip it up, throw it away. _I want to see you again._ She really did want to see him again.

Then, they were at the front steps of the blue house, and he didn’t want to go inside, at least not yet. No, this was her domain, and maybe someday she would invite him in for dinner with this new family of hers, and she would awkwardly introduce him to Kaya, Cat, and Eugene, all of whom he already knew, and she would be an anxious mess all night, and weeks later, they would laugh together about that dinner. But for now, he walked her up the front steps, ready to say goodbye on the little porch. With the picture windows alongside them, they bracketed the front door, their backs almost touching the outside walls, and he could feel her warm breath in such close proximity, and he thought maybe a handshake would be appropriate. Old-fashioned, yes, but appropriate, so he held out his hand right as she leaned in to kiss him, and their noses bumped. His hand was against her chest. No, that wasn’t right, and she recoiled, laughing uncomfortably, rubbing the bridge of her nose, apologizing in words he could barely understand, so he apologized too. No, he wouldn’t shake her hand. Instead, he kept still, waited to see what she did next, and when she leaned forward to kiss him again, her palms resting on his chest, he closed his eyes and stopped thinking.

Tonight, she just wanted a kiss. Just one little kiss, even though they’d made out on his couch already, even though she’d pushed him down and looked as if she wanted to consume him. But now, just one little kiss, and he could imagine mistletoe above them, and she was simply following tradition. She kissed him goodbye knowing that she would see him again. She was gentle because she had time to be.

When she pulled back, she managed an awkward _see you later_ before she opened the unlocked door of the house and ducked inside. Had she not kissed him, he would’ve stood there stunned and wondered what he’d done wrong, but instead, he felt relieved that he could take in the aftermath of the kiss alone. He shook his hands out, trying to keep his nervous energy at bay. She’d _kissed_ him, and though they’d kissed plenty of times before, this time felt different, like a first, like something that ought to give him butterflies. Only when someone walked down the road the house was on did he realize that he had started grinning like an idiot.

For the first half of his walk home, he was too entranced to realize that she’d never given back his coat.

* * *

When she came over in October, they didn’t bother acting as if they would take things slow.

“Is it still numb, right here?”

His forehead resting against her side, his body diagonal across the bed, he pressed on that one spot on her chest, the place where she’d broken ribs. Her fingers tangled in his hair, her thumb rubbing his scalp, matching his motion. Though he felt pleasantly warm, sleepy, and sated, her deep breaths made him think that, by comparison, she felt spent.

“Yeah, just a little,” she said, then brought her hand down to meet his, taking his fingers and gently touching that spot. “I can feel pressure, but I don’t notice light touches at all.”

“Strange,” he said, skirting that part of her body, the taut muscles of her stomach. He could remember the bruises. He could remember the way she breathed in only the upper part of her chest, trying to keep the pain at bay. 

“Sometimes, I wonder if it would’ve healed different in another time,” she gave, “but all things considered, not so bad.”

“Not so bad,” he agreed.

He loved her body. The thought felt trite, but he loved her body, the curve of her hip, the dimples on the backs of her thighs, the muscles in her stomach. He liked the way her knees cracked when she stood up, getting old, getting tired of crouching in the gardens, and he liked how her hair splayed on her pillow when she kept it down, too long, always in braids nowadays, a different version of the same person. A different image of someone he loved. And her fingers in his hair, and if he really listened, he could hear rain falling outside, and October had been so cold these past few mornings, and he would wake up and reach for her but find his bed empty. Though they'd meant to take things slow - in theory, at least - he wished he could ask her for a specific day, returning home on December 1st, so that he wouldn’t have to spend the winter in a cold bed, but still, he was only making excuses. He missed her enough for holding her like this to make him feel near tears.

And maybe he was wrong, but she kept pulling him closer at night. When he asked her over, he’d meant for dinner and a movie shared in the living room, but they’d started to ignore the movie instead, and they were too old for anything over-the-clothes. He’d enjoyed the sex, more than enjoyed it, and he wouldn’t say no to another round, but lying here with her, part of him hoped that, when she came over next time, she would fall asleep on the couch, fall asleep against him, and he would have no choice but to carry her upstairs and tuck her in on her side, and waking up the next morning, she would turn off her alarm and then roll over onto him like she always did, and everything would feel right again. In this world of small problems, he was starting to realize that he never wanted to wake up alone again.

“I think I had a miscarriage,” she said, and his mind went blank for a moment, then for another, and suddenly, he felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

He didn’t know what to say. When he tried to find words, he found himself struggling to form a sentence, any sentence. He didn’t know what to think, but his chest hurt, and a long time ago, she’d read a book about Buddhist beliefs, or maybe it wasn’t Buddhism at all, but some creed, some system that meant that pain in certain parts of the body meant unexpressed emotions. He remembered something about chest pain. Which emotion was that? Chest pain. He knew that there was something there, in that part of his chest, something he hadn’t let out, and he wanted to know which emotion it was. He wanted an answer.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and her hands went limp against his head, her palm moving to cover her eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s alright,” he forced out, but he didn’t know how to keep this conversation going, and he felt as if he needed her to keep talking. He needed elaboration. He needed some kind of prompt so that he would say the right thing, for right now, he hadn’t a clue what the _right thing_ was.

He thought of her in the blue house. He’d tried to picture her room there countless times, and though the image shifted based on how he felt, he couldn’t imagine her staying there while something like that happened. And their last morning. Their last morning. He'd heard her giving a kind of distant sermon. That morning, she wanted to talk to him about something that scared her, and he stopped her because he didn’t want to talk. And then, she thanked God and left the room, her words echoing off the bathroom walls and into the bedroom. And he should’ve known.

He should’ve known. He should’ve been able to put those pieces together. In retrospect, it all felt so obvious, so predictable, and there he was, lying in bed and lamenting about... _something_. Thinking of something pointless. Probably thinking about himself. And their lives had entwined because, when they let each other in, they could tell stories with a flick of the finger, the slightest head tilt. If he let her in, then he would never need to find the right words, for she would understand his silence, and had he been listening to her that day, he would’ve known how scared she felt. Had he listened, he wouldn’t have shoved his hand between her legs, and she may never have left him at all.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words sounding so hollow.

And the miscarriage hardly felt momentous, they’d feared a pregnancy for years, but he was stuck on her fear. He was stuck on her tone of voice that day, and on how he’d tried to keep her quiet.

“I should head out,” she said, and she shifted against him, trying to move away from him, and no, that was not how tonight would go. He couldn’t let her leave the house. No, he couldn’t, not at all, so he reached for her hand, tethered her to him. Sitting on the edge of the bed, her back facing him, she wanted to leave, and he tried almost desperately to keep her close.

She wouldn’t look at him, and really, he didn’t want her to. Instead, he needed time, maybe ten minutes, and a piece of paper too. He needed to write down the perfect thing to say even though he didn’t know what he was thinking. Was he sad or angry? No, neither of those, but still, he felt _something._ In front of him, she bowed her head, her hand trapped in his, and she wouldn’t leave, not yet, but she wanted him to give whatever speech he’d prepared, then let her go home to lick her wounds alone. For now, she would let him be the hero, but she wouldn’t put up with the charade for long.

And neither of them would ever be a hero. He wondered if they would ever even be considered _good._ But he remembered her on that morning, the change in her tone, and what had he been doing at the time? What had prompted the discussion, other than the inevitability she'd felt? That morning, he’d been trying to pretend that they were okay, so he’d held her in bed. He’d run his fingers through her hair. With the power out, they didn’t have anywhere they needed to be, and now, it all made sense, why they were allowed to sleep in, why Maria hadn’t come to Tess and Joel asking for help. So, a morning spent sleeping in, and the first thing he did was hold her, kiss her neck, and pretend that those actions came from love when they really came from fear. And when she brought up the topic, he assumed she wanted to fight again, so he deflected, but no, she hadn’t wanted to fight at all.

As he imagined what she’d been thinking, he felt a burning sensation in his chest. That morning, he’d held her, kissed her neck, and - he felt the shame deep in his gut - she’d thought she was safe with him. And then, he deflected, and she left him because she would never feel safe with him again.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but that wasn’t enough. But what was enough? He almost didn’t want her to forgive him. 

At least she kept still. At least she wasn’t leaving. 

“You were scared,” he said without thinking, then cursed himself, tried to recover. “I left you alone.”

He watched her swallow uncomfortably, her body so still, goosebumps raising on her arms. An hour ago, they were fine, but he couldn’t dwell on that. _The only way out,_ he reminded himself, some quote from a book he read years ago, _is through._

“The afternoon that you went and talked to Maria,” he said, trying to push past the subject. “You told her then.”

Tess nodded, the motion tilting her hand in his.

“Fat lot of good that did,” Tess gave.

“I know there’s not much she can do.”

“Yeah,” Tess said, “but she wasn’t kind about it.”

He furrowed his brow.

“What did she say to you?”

“That I was wrong,” Tess gave. “That it was wishful thinking, and that I should wait it out.”

Wincing, he wondered how Tess had controlled her temper. _Wishful thinking._ Tess would sooner wish for a baseball bat to her skull.

“That was wrong of her,” he said.

Nodding, Tess said, “Yeah, it was.”

He wanted to apologize again. He wanted to apologize on Maria’s behalf, but he thought that that would fall flat. And what he wanted most of all was an opportunity to relive that morning, and he didn’t care how he’d felt, how entrenched he’d been in his own grief. This time, he would do right by her. When he held her that morning, he would do so because he loved her, and he did love her, his anxious premonitions be damned. He loved her, and he would kiss her neck in order to tell her that he loved her, and he would card his fingers through her hair, shorter back then, and he would hold her in bed and be glad that no one had come knocking. A free morning to themselves, the whole world at their fingertips, and they lived lives in which a power outage - or even power at all - was possible. Because he knew how glorious, how rich and exquisite a free morning was, he would hold her and relish in this life of theirs, a marvel in a world of horrors, the dream they’d each quietly concocted in the QZ while they thought the other wasn’t listening. She wanted to take it easy for a while, so here they were, taking it easy. And she brought up a topic that scared her, and in the end, it didn’t matter that the conversation was for nothing because now she knew how he would react if it all happened again. Now, she could have the same conversation again but less fearfully, should there, heaven forbid, be a _next time._

“I hurt you,” he said, his mind teeming with words but those three being the best he could come up with. “I’m sorry.”

Though he couldn’t stand her silence, he feared hearing her speak again. He didn’t want to know what was on her mind. He didn’t want her to hate him. Still, he held her hand in his, and she wasn’t backing away, not yet, and they’d always been tactile people, hadn’t they? While traversing the Outsides, he would pull her away from ledges, and she would touch his shoulders and steer him home, but they’d never held hands like this. No, they had, at one point they had, and she’d known about Sarah for maybe a few days then, and Tommy was gone, and at first, he thought she pitied him, but he looked up at her and saw his exhaustion, his anger, his fear mirrored in her. She hadn’t held his hand because she felt sorry for him; she’d held his hand because she wanted to take his pain away.

The room felt cold for September, not cold enough to warrant a fire downstairs but cold enough to raise goosebumps on his bare chest. He missed having her so close.

“Are you cold?” he asked, and she nodded, so he pulled back the blankets, tapped her side of the bed. _Stay,_ he didn’t want to ask her, and thankfully, she slid her legs under the covers, pulling the sheets up over her shoulders. Though he didn’t know if she wanted to stay because she thought she might be safe again here or because the walk home would be too long, he relaxed anyway, glad to have her next to him. At least now she wouldn’t leave until morning.

He didn’t know if he should touch her. He didn’t know if he was allowed to hold her, but he wanted to, and he wanted to say more, but he thought that saying more would only hurt her, so he kept his thoughts to himself, turned onto his side. They could sleep like this. Maybe they would be up for an hour more, but eventually, they would fall asleep, his mind tiring itself out with all the racing thoughts. And even when he couldn’t stop thinking, he found that he slept better next to her, so an uncomfortable, anxious night with her would be better than a cozy, thoughtless night without her. For now, they were fine. He could make peace with tonight. He could let his shame go until morning.

“You’re thinking too loud,” she said, her voice quiet, and he turned onto his other side, faced her back. He missed her even though she was so close to him. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, and she leaned onto her back, tilting her head toward him. 

“If there’s something you want to say, then you can say it,” she said, and to his surprise, she looked open-minded rather than cynical. Though he’d expected her to sound exhausted, done with him, instead she seemed to genuinely want to know.

But he couldn’t tell her, could he? He couldn’t tell her that having children - never by choice, they both knew that much - would be terrifying and painful for him. He couldn’t tell her that the thought of bringing up those emotions made him wince. And she knew that already, she’d told him on that last morning that she knew the topic was hard for him, but he wanted to tell her more, to tell her this time that he would willingly bring up those emotions if she needed him to, and he would feel all of that pain, and he would push past the pain for her. And he would never resent her for such a thing, not at all, and he knew that parts of him would never heal, but, say, he would bandage those parts. He could be a father in infinite casts, walking with a limp and massaging aching shoulders. And he didn’t care if she grew to hate him someday; he would be there in the background, always supporting her, always supporting the child they’d never wanted, always making their child feel like a blessing to this world. More immediately, he would tell her that he knew her pain, and maybe, he even felt her pain too. Was that why he hadn’t been able to find words earlier? Pain defied words, and he saw hers, knew it too in some way, and he didn’t know how to take her fear away, but he would try to carry her burden in whatever way he could. Though neither of them wanted this life, and though he knew that there was no way to make this a _good thing,_ he would try to quell the bad parts where he could. And he loved her. He loved her, and he wished things could be different, but he would face those things head-on. And she would never be alone in this world again.

“It’s okay,” she said, nodding. “I want to know what’s on your mind.”

He took a deep breath, and before he could think things through, he told her.

* * *

When the alarm sounded the next morning, she turned the clock off, then relaxed back into her spot, _five more minutes_. Months ago, she would’ve rolled onto his side of the bed, and he would’ve held her, their legs tangled beneath the blankets, huddling for warmth and something more, but now, she stayed to her side. At least she’d stayed. Looking over at her, he saw how the first light of morning caught on her shoulder, the scars there, knife-fights and bullet grazes and the treacherous, uncouth story of her life, and he wanted to pull the blankets back and study this map of her, experiences written in marred skin. Here, the mark on her back that nearly cost her her life, or the bite on her neck, now a chemical burn, something that made him think she might never die. And he could remember her without some of these marks, their makeshift beds pushed together in their shitty QZ apartment, mattresses like summer camp bunks, and he would look over at her while she slept and feel things he refused to put words to. But now, he could find words, and most clearly, he knew that he wanted to wake up next to her every morning for the rest of his life. For once, something that treacherous and outlandish came to him easily, and he wondered how he could tell her such a thing. They’d already done the obvious, so maybe he should try something less obvious. When the idea came to him, he wondered if it would be too much, and maybe it would be, but he ought to try. He needed to try.

And this time, he had the makings for a perfect breakfast, putting him close to starving on his grocery dues, but no, they would have a normal breakfast. He thought she would want something normal, so eggs on toast, and he gave himself the one with the cracked yolk. While they ate, he talked about the horses, and a leaky pipe at the edge of town, and the wooden toy cow he’d started carving in order to trade for fresh pastries from a woman down the street. And nothing felt forced, at least not to him, and she smiled at times, and he wondered if he should bring up the night beforehand but decided against it. They’d talked, and there wasn’t anything left to talk about. Though he didn’t want to watch her leave, he knew that holding her back would only hurt them both, so he let her lead. Or, at least, he let her lead until she went to do the dishes, and then, he stepped in, no longer worried about hurting their _normal_ morning. He absolutely refused to let her do the dishes.

She’d brought spare clothes with her, a different pair of pants and a new shirt to put under her same sweater. She dressed facing away from him, and when he turned around, he found her pulling her hair back, so he touched her arm, slid the elastic off of her wrist. All these years later, he still knew how to braid, and maybe this one would be messy - the humidity made her hair thick - but he tied the elastic down. There. Today, she would wear a headband that kept her ears warm, the October rain bringing a chill over the town, and he would do repairs while thinking of how his fingers laced had through her hair while she stood before him, her shoulders relaxed, the veins in her neck moving in time with slow heartbeats. He would remember how normal everything had been, and he would think that maybe they could come back together again, his faults be damned. 

Against all odds, she still loved him. This time, he wouldn’t take that for granted.


	22. Wood Scraps

They made pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving. He still wasn’t allowed to touch the crusts. In their kitchen, they had four mismatched pie dishes, borrowed from all around town, and she shoved two baking sheets into their oven, trying to halve the pumpkins small enough to make each tray fit. _Want to roast the seeds after?_ she asked, and he felt as if he shouldn’t say no. She wanted the guts for compost. _World’s worst jack-o-lanterns,_ he said, and she laughed, gave him a look, for they’d carved those last month, little tealights inside each one, pumpkins lining their porch, and apple slices and maple caramel left out for any children who came by, costumes relating to a holiday they’d never truly experienced. _They’d lose their minds if they ever saw a Hershey bar,_ she said to him while they had dinner that night, and he nodded, then said that he wondered what it was like to live a life without chocolate.

At the beginning of November, she finally gave back his leather jacket, but not really, for she would take it from its hook by the door and wear it on patrols, the coat bunching up on top of her legs while she rode her horse. She’d stayed over enough times to start putting her clothes on hangers in his closet. When he woke up next to her, there was still a kind of novelty, but when she slept at the blue house, he would wake up, reach for her, and be crushed by the emptiness alongside him. No, that wasn’t how things were anymore, even though she didn’t technically live with him. A couple nights ago, when he went to pick up some meat for dinner, Kaya even slapped his arm and accused him of stealing _her woman._ And he’d even had dinner with everyone in the blue house the week beforehand, Tess looking red in the face the entire night, Kaya’s pestering - and Cat’s surprising nonchalance - wearing him down just a little. He still felt inadequate. When he talked with Tess, really talked, he still felt like a bumbling foal, and he wished he could get better at all of this, the stuff that unfortunately mattered. But maybe he would have to sit through a so-called family dinner, feel the discomfort, and come back next week anyway. Maybe the repetition without progress was the whole point.

After dinner that night, Tess waited until Kaya and Cat washed the dishes to ask him if she could walk him home, and though she didn’t say anything more, he knew she wouldn’t walk back to the blue house without him. And as he nodded, he wondered if she missed him the way he missed her, for though he figured she wanted to come home, at least a little bit, he wondered if they missed each other in the same ways. If not, how did she miss him? He missed her on mornings when he woke up alone; did she turn over in bed and seek him out, only to realize he’d slept across town? Or did she miss him while listening to music in the gardens, a song he liked coming up on shuffle? And he couldn’t ask her, for there were boundaries to even the greatest vulnerability, so as she said _okay,_ nodded to herself in confirmation, he was left to wonder.

She wanted her coat from upstairs. The days had grown cold, no snow yet but surely some coming soon, and she said he could wait in the living room, or follow her up if he wanted. And he did want to see her room in the blue house. For months, he’d been imagining this room, and he wanted to see it now, compare the reality to the images in his mind. The stairs creaked enough to betray what they were doing, and as she shut the bedroom door behind him, he wondered if she might walk up to him and kiss him fervently, then take him on her twin-sized mattress, one that made noise every time she turned over at night, but no, she wanted to tuck them both away. She wanted to hide with him, two children in a treehouse looking out at the street. Going over to the sparse closet, she pretended he wasn’t there, but he could see in the way she carried herself that she was nervous. _Do you like it?_ she didn’t ask, so he looked around to figure out if he did.

She kept her books in stacks on the floor. He wondered if she’d organized those in a specific way, alphabetically or by genre. Though the room was sizable, she only had a small bed, a long desk set in front of the wide window, a desk chair, and a bedside table crafted from cinderblocks and plywood. She hadn’t made the bed this morning. On the bedside table, she kept a notebook on top of what she’d been reading as well as an alarm clock that looked like a baby chick, her wedding headband resting on top of its head. And right above the headboard, in plain and conspicuous sight on her otherwise empty walls, hung a drawing, and after staring hard enough, he saw the two of them standing in the chapel, their wedding day in penciled glory, the background a blur but their faces painfully recognizable. At the edge, Cat had signed the picture, and he could remember now, the front pews, Ellie and her friends, and Cat sat next to Ellie and drew, looking up every few seconds. Back then, he’d assumed Cat had been bored - and really, he had only momentarily looked at their audience before cowering back toward Tess and wondering why they’d chosen to do this in public - but no, Cat had been drawing the ceremony. He wondered if there had been other ceremonies here not captured on film. Though he and Tess had a photograph, others might have nothing, and Cat had wanted to give them something. Or maybe Ellie had asked Cat to sketch the ceremony so she herself could watch, or maybe Cat had actually been bored and this picture instead had been a gift of some kind for Tess. But regardless of how the picture had come to be, Tess kept it above her headboard, and when she finally found her jacket in the cramped closet, he shook himself, trying not to look as if he’d been staring. She wanted him to walk her home. Right. No, not right. _She_ wanted to walk _him_ home. That was what she wanted to do.

Weeks ago - but long after he’d already finished - she talked to him about breaking the picture, about physicality. He’d seen her driver’s license, her old ration cards, the phone number and written address of her father’s business. She liked being able to touch something and from that item find a memory. And in a way, he did the same thing, but he didn’t like remembering the way she did, not usually. Sometimes, he forgot that they were two different people, that they could disagree on something that didn’t matter but both hold steadfast to their beliefs, that her reaction and his wouldn’t always be identical. While they lay in bed, the house cool around them, wind whipping outside, she told him that she broke the picture because she didn’t have anything else to break. And he understood, didn’t he? He understood in an instant. And she was sorry about the crease, but he shook his head, told her not to be sorry, and though he didn’t tell her this part, he was starting to like that little crease, a reminder of how he felt each time she asked if she could stay over. In return for her admission, she asked him why he’d stopped coming to the window, and he’d furrowed his brow, went to say that he’d only come by that one time, but when he looked down at her, he could see that they both were telling lies. She’d seen him every time. She’d actually seen him every time. And why had she chosen to look the one time? Because she wanted to see him, she said. Simply because she wanted to see him.

Today, they went together to Thanksgiving dinner - or _Dinner,_ the new name, but to old folks like him, it would always be Thanksgiving - and carrying pies across town with her, he started feeling as if he should expect to do the same with her on Christmas, not because she’d asked him to join her but because she didn’t need to ask anymore. In the community center, they’d set up long tables like the ones in the Harry Potter movies Sarah had loved, and he sat alongside Tess while dishes were passed around, the conversation constant, a kind of white noise, and his thigh was flush with hers, and sometimes, she had to lean away from him to use her silverware, but she stayed close anyway. And he’d been given too big a slice of pie, so she reached over with her fork and finished his off. She wouldn’t have done that a month ago. The whole walk home, he thought of how she’d finished his pie without thinking, without making a joke, without making a big deal. She wouldn’t have done that a month ago.

And now, they were together on the couch, sharing a blanket while the fire turned to coals, and he ought to get up and put more wood in, but she was leaning against him and reading, and he didn’t want to disturb her. Across the room, their radio played the local station, at first to hear “Alice’s Restaurant” but then, because he didn’t want to get up to turn the thing off, heading into the classical music hours of this evening, soft background noise to pair with the absent crackle of the fire. Though he had a book in his hands too, he’d been staring at the same page for a long time, his mind too full to read. And against him, she flipped her pages as if everything was completely normal, and she showed no sign of wanting to head home for the night.

“Tess?”

She hummed a response, and maybe he shouldn’t take her from her reading. But then again, he’d put this off long enough, and though he’d mentally mapped every possible reaction of hers, leaning toward the bad ones out of caution, he didn’t really want to know what she would say or feel. No, he wanted to have already done this, to already know her reaction, no effort or vulnerability to be had. But, against his anxieties, he thought she might like this. But weren’t those the worst rejections, the ones when he really thought she would like this?

“I made you something,” he said, the nervousness making his forehead start to sweat.

He forced his hand into the front pocket of his flannel shirt, bumping her shoulder in the process. _Smooth,_ he thought, his fingers shaking as he pulled out this stupid, pointless gift that she’d already told him she didn’t want. Oh, this was such a bad idea, but he held them out in the palm of his hand anyway, staring uncomfortably at her as she looked at his hand. 

“I know you said you didn’t want something like this,” he said, the word _ring_ feeling unapproachable, “and if you don’t like it, that’s fine. Only took me an hour.”

The first ring, the one he’d made in his size, had taken three hours to make, and the second one had taken four, plus the times he’d awkwardly held her hand and tried to gauge her size from that gesture alone. Luckily, he had plenty of thin wood scraps in his workshop upstairs, and he made a mould out of an old beer bottle, and he read through the sealant instructions four times before he attempted his first layer. Two wooden rings, the stain accenting the striations, one ring smaller than the other. They matched because they’d been made from wood of the same tree, but didn’t because their pieces had come from different branches. Looking at the two now, he could see that his looked less polished than hers, for he’d gotten out the finest and most sparse of his sandpaper only for hers.

“Not a big deal,” he added, though he didn’t know if he meant to comfort her or himself.

For what felt like ages, she stared down at his hand, and he wished his heart would calm down. He wished _he_ would calm down. He hated _putting himself out there,_ as Maria said. He hated talking about his feelings, and he hated having feelings, and he wished he hadn’t made rings, and he especially wished he hadn’t made them in October, then put off giving her one until now. Or maybe he should’ve kept them in a drawer and never thought of them again, just something he did in an afternoon - two afternoons - to kill some time. When they got married, she told him that she didn’t want a ring, the two of them thinking of ghosts with empty fingers, and though these rings didn’t have ghosts, she’d still said no.

Reaching out, she put her hand in front of him, her gaze still down at the rings. Had he not known her so well, he would’ve called the gesture dainty.

“What’re you doing?” he asked.

“You have to put it on,” she said. “I think that’s how this works.”

He expected her tone to be joking, but it wasn’t, so he nodded, took the ring in her size, and he had to count her fingers from her left to her right, the fourth one, why hadn’t he just started at the pinky? Slipping the ring onto her finger, he sighed when he found it fit, thank goodness, all that time trying to estimate the size of her fingers between his having worked. And she took the one in his size from his palm, then held his hand in hers, brought the ring onto his finger. 

“Thanks,” she said, then settled back in, returning to her book, relaxing against him.

He wondered if what had happened had just happened or if he’d dreamt it, but looking down, he had a ring on his finger, and she had one on hers. Only he’d put hers on her left hand, and she’d put his on his right, and he hadn’t noticed at all. Did she like it? Was she only wearing it to please him? Had he been wrong to give her a ring? But he’d woken up next to her and realized that he wanted her there every morning, every single morning, and he knew that the next logical thing to do would be ask her to marry him, but they’d already done that. Maybe he should’ve just told her. Why hadn’t he just told her instead? She’d never wanted rings. He could’ve just told her. 

She turned her page. He knew he wouldn’t be able to focus for the rest of the evening, so he slid out from behind her, went to stoke the fire. Would she like the radio off? No, that’s fine, the music is nice actually, he can leave it on. And they have Thanksgiving leftovers in their fridge, a perk of having Maria force them to stay late and clean up, and he thought he would feel full well into tomorrow morning, and Tess showed no sign of wanting to head back to the blue house. She ate the last of his pie. He didn’t want to put the ring onto his other hand. His hand felt different. He wanted to know if hers felt different too, but specifically if it felt different in the same way his did. 

Beyond the living room windows, he saw Ellie heading toward the house, coming in for the evening. At dinner, she’d been a few tables over and hanging out with Dina, Jesse, and Jesse’s folks. Had Ellie noticed Joel and Tess across the room, she didn’t acknowledge that she had, nor did she say hello.

“Come back,” Tess said from the couch. “I’m getting cold.”

The fire was burning hot. He knew what she meant.

* * *

Though he’d seen all of the signs - her slow breathing, her book closed on her lap, her forehead against his shoulder - he hadn’t nudged her awake, for it thrilled him when she fell asleep against him, not in bed, just on the couch, and only when she didn’t mean to fall asleep. A colicky baby, years ago he'd learned that sleep only occurred when one felt truly comfortable and safe, and he could remember traveling across the country with Ellie and Tess, and every bump in the night would wake the two adults, each of them bracketing the girl and looking at her first, then at each other, trying to find a threat, and eventually, they would fall back to sleep, but they wouldn’t entirely settle, their dreams hazy, their rest fitful. In the QZ, Tess never fell asleep without intending to. She rarely even fell asleep when she did want to sleep. But sometimes, here in Jackson, they would be watching television together, or they would sit on the couch and read, or he would put on a record and look out the window while she rested against him and closed her eyes, and life had been hard for them. No, not hard, what a melodramatic word to use, but they both had a tiredness within them that they would never remedy, and that tiredness felt like honey as she brought her arms around him, leaned her head against his chest, and let sleep come. They were safe now, and when she fell asleep against him, he would stop thinking, stop wondering, stop worrying. So, why bother nudging her, asking if she wanted to go upstairs? Her body felt warm and heavy against his. He didn’t want to get up at all.

But his eyes grew heavy, and he knew that he would wake up with a backache if they stayed down here tonight, so gently, he pulled his legs from the couch, trying not to jostle her. His knees felt the cold, aching as he stood, and when he brought one arm around her back, another beneath her thighs, he wondered if he ought to join her at the gym, damn his legs, damn his bones. They were getting old, both of them, his hair and her brows going grey, and as he carried her upstairs, he longed for sleep, a good, long rest, and a morning off, and her next to him in bed, and there wouldn’t be an alarm to turn off, but still, she would turn over in bed and reach for him, and he would be there, would maybe even kiss her forehead just because, and eventually, they would get hungry, so, breakfast. He wondered when they would start having snow. He wondered if she would keep taking his jacket on patrols, making him wear something else. He wondered when she would start taking his socks again, or maybe she already had, and he’d grown so accustomed that he hadn’t even noticed.

They hadn’t made the bed that morning; he had no problem tucking her in, resting her on the proper side. He didn’t understand how she could sleep so deeply even when he carried her upstairs, for he was hardly graceful, sometimes bumping her feet against the railing, but she stayed asleep nonetheless. Though he thought about kissing her goodnight, he hadn’t woken her so far, and she looked serene, out cold, not getting up until morning, and he couldn’t wake her. Instead, he went to his side of the bed and shimmied out of his pants, still in his clothes from the day, not bothering to get changed, and climbed into bed alongside her. In this part of the fall, right before the true cold came, the whole settlement grew so dark, no snow to reflect light, the leaves gone from the trees, and he almost felt afraid of the dark. He hadn’t wanted to go to bed without her during this season, and thankfully, they hadn’t had a winter apart, or at least hadn’t had a winter apart yet. That old Firefly phrase, _look for the light,_ stupid as shit, but it echoed in his mind on nights like this one. Where was the light? Right next to him in bed, sleeping soundly, wearing a ring he’d made her, one he’d put on her finger at her request. That was something.

He didn’t know what to do with his own, still on his right hand. Should he sleep with it on? No, the sensation felt too unfamiliar for now, so he put the ring on his bedside table, then stared it down. Wood scraps, an objectively awful gift, but she hadn’t minded. At least she hadn’t minded.

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. He felt so tired. They both needed to sleep.


	23. The Funeral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this draft uhhhhh lol did Not age well. promise it's unrelated to (and mostly written before) certain things that shall go unmentioned

On the day of the funeral, he still had burns on his hands, but he wasn’t sure he should keep the bandages on any longer. Of course, Tess fretted over him - more for her comfort than for his - and she sat him down on the couch, her little first aid kit on her lap, and rubbed salve on his wounds. She hadn’t been injured in the crossfire, but she’d been the one to pull him back, make sure only his hands got burned. And maybe that protection meant she’d saved more lives than he had.

They buried the bodies days ago. Because of his hands, he couldn’t help dig, but he stood and watched Tess thrust a shovel into the frozen earth anyway. Had he known in advance, he would’ve carved a cross, a grave marker of some kind, but all he could do was stand and watch as shrouded bodies were lowered into the earth while family members - and with part of the wall still down, only family members were allowed to leave their homes at all - looked on and tried to hold back their grief. Twelve graves, twelve bodies, and though Maria had prepared for events like this one, she’d only ever prepared for ten deaths at once, and even that number had felt implausible. But they buried twelve bodies, and promptly too. Victor the stablehand and his girlfriend, an older couple from across town, familiar but unknown faces dead and staring back at Joel while Maria wrapped cotton sheets around their bodies. _We can’t use the synthetic ones,_ Maria told him, her version of consoling, _because they won’t biodegrade._

By now, they had the wall rebuilt. He’d seen years beforehand how Maria hoarded lumber in secret for such a purpose, and now, her obsession for once felt warranted. But the lockdown would only end after the funeral. Though he and Tess had been out of their home in the days after the attack, the rest of the settlement had been forced inside, emergency broadcasts over KJAX telling them that the lockdown was in place for their own safety, and please lock your doors in case of further danger. Still, he’d seen Ellie coming and going, but one of her friends had been among the dead, so even Maria wouldn’t scold her for breaking orders. And everyone knew that only a great tragedy would make Maria go soft.

He didn’t want to go to the funeral. He’d had a feeling that something like this would happen. He’d known that their safety here was an illusion, but he tempted fate anyway, and for a fleeting few hours, he’d felt as if he should’ve never been afraid. He’d felt as if all of his strife had been for nothing, and he should’ve said certain things years ago. Then, the emergency alerts sounded around town, loud sirens, and he woke next to his wife in a panic. As Tess massaged his aching knuckles, he looked up at her and felt that he had killed these people himself.

“If I wrap them just a little,” she said, going into her kit for bandages, “then you can put on your gloves and have no one notice.”

He nodded, not wanting to argue with her, but still, he felt unkind for having bandages on his hands at a funeral. No matter how uncomfortable he got, he would keep his gloves on for the whole event, even the inside parts, and would only take the gloves off when they got to Maria and Tommy’s afterward, ready to discuss moving forward. He couldn’t let the grieving families see that he’d lived. He refused to show them what could have been.

If he focused on Tess’s hands, he could stop thinking for a little while. She had such stable fingers. When he first saw her hold a gun, he’d made note of that, a surgeon’s hands, no tremors or shakes, perfect for drawing a straight line. She folded the bandages over his hands in a taught, practiced way - she’d had to take a Red Cross class in order to become a camp counselor, back when she thought she would never see bullet wounds or gangrene - and watching her brought him back to the current moment. They were safe now, as safe as they’d ever been. By the time his burns healed, he wouldn’t even have scars. Though her knuckles had been dry because of the cold, this daily ritual of theirs had made her hands supple, the last of the salve rubbed in for good measure. And their pillows had inched closer, and without their typical morning patrols, the settlement locked down for now, they reached for each other in the morning, two sleepless bodies trying to find relief in one another, and until the radio they kept on her bedside table sounded with a message from Maria, they stayed there, knowing what would come but pushing that inevitability away. Soon enough, Maria would ask them to look at the destruction, and they would follow her orders, but for now, they could call today a good day, or at least a better day. In their corner of the world, nothing was wrong, and he could inch closer to her and pretend this wasn’t all his fault. He could hold her and think he hadn’t brought down the wall.

Finishing up, Tess brought her thumbs over top of his bandages, then hesitated before leaning down to kiss the back of one of his hands, an uncharacteristic gesture, one that made his heart pound. He wondered if she knew what he was thinking, but he figured she didn’t. At some point, he would need to tell her, but he feared she would get angry, so not right now. Not right now.

“We should head out,” she said, leaving the kit on the couch and standing up.

They didn’t own funeral clothes. For once, she let him wear his leather jacket, opting for her own winter coat instead, and she helped him put on his gloves, his jacket, his boots. When his hands finally healed, he swore he would never let another person lace boots for him again. Once she laced her own, they were ready to go, but he didn’t want to go, not at all. Twelve new graves. At this rate, they would run out of cemetery space soon. He wondered if he’d been wrong to let her kiss his hand.

“I don’t want to do this,” she said, and he looked up at her, found remorse in her eyes. Suddenly, he felt far more uncomfortable, for Tess rarely scared like this.

“Me neither,” he said, and in a way, he thought she might be asking him if they could stay home, pretend they’d overslept, claim they’d missed the announcements. But they couldn’t back out, and they both knew they couldn’t. Still, her hand hovered on the knob of their front door. 

_Wouldn’t it be crazy if we didn’t?_ they both thought, but she opened the front door instead. They weren’t going to be cowards today.

* * *

They didn’t know what else to do after dinner, so they went to bed, the curtains drawn, the winter nights long enough to allow them this indulgence. Though they still had one of Maria’s radios in case of emergency, he took the batteries out, left the thing in their closet. When he pulled the covers back, got into bed alongside her, she leaned onto her stomach, reaching an arm around his torso and tucking herself in against him, her face half-hidden. There was nothing left for them to do today, and since she’d come home, they were past holding back, past pretending that denial kept them safe. And he should fear her. He should hate her in some way, all of his prophecies having come true. But instead, he reached for her, and that reaching felt vital, as important as breath, and he could blame himself for every death, but he couldn’t stop loving her. And wasn’t that what he feared most? That the things he couldn’t stop doing would destroy his world?

She slept with her wedding band on, though she took it off while in the gardens; he left his on all day, then put it on his bedside table at night. And maybe, when he gave her that ring, they’d both known what was coming, had sealed their fates and had chosen to face this together. Maybe she'd looked at him through the window of the blue house because they had a specific timeline, and the clock was ticking, and if she wanted to be able to hold him like this in February, then she needed to notice him right then. Or maybe he wanted to make things up so that he had something other than death to think about, and he could imagine facing this without her, the house cold, the days monochromatic, the nights sleepless because he feared someone would kill him before morning came. And he held her close and pushed those thoughts from his mind, no, not real, and she reached for him, and he reached back, and if there was danger, then one of them would wake the other, and should either of them be in harm’s way, the other would pull them away from the flames.

At least his hands had stopped aching. She took off the bandages before dinner, said his skin looked better. His stupid, impulsive gestures. Who reached into flames? _Someone who sees something worth saving,_ he thought, and thankfully, Tess had seen something else and pulled him away.

“Can you do that again?” she asked, her voice quiet and shy, not meek, a little embarrassed. And yeah, of course he could, so he reached down with his free hand, lifted up the hem of her shirt, her back bare in the cold house, and he had seen decomposing skin. He had seen necrotic tissue in the QZ, half-rotten bodies on the Outsides, shallow graves and wounds that would never heal and the bullet graze on her back, seeping in those first few days when she swore it was nothing. Even in the dark, he could find the scar with ease, big enough to show that it had almost killed her, and he brought the tips of his fingers to the skin of her back, then gently brought his hand toward her neck, then back down her spine. The first time he’d done this to her, they’d been in the heart of their honeymoon phase, right after Ellie had stayed with them during a snowed-in weekend in December, and he ran his fingers up Tess’s back, clothed this time, and she said _do that again._ And when they were in bed together, sometimes she would say _do that again_ with no other prompting, and he figured there should be a word for this, right? A word for exactly this motion. But it went unspoken, at least mostly unspoken, and she relaxed against him, closed her eyes.

She mumbled _thanks_ as he tip-tapped his fingers up her spine, the motion maybe relaxing him more than it relaxed her. After feeling helpless all day, there was something divine about helping her calm down, and sensing how her body reacted to him as he held her. He didn’t want to think of facing today without her.

“I love you, Tess,” he said, and he felt he was inciting violence again. He felt he was saying those words in defeat. And he wondered if she’d imagined him saying those words, if she’d spent her time at the blue house daydreaming that when she spoke them the first time, he said them back. But no, she needed to wait until February, nearly a year later, and he told her quietly one night while they listened to the radio, close on the couch, fire crackling, and he thought they were safe. Back then, in what felt like a different lifetime, he hadn’t expected a reaction, at least not a reaction beyond hers to their rings, but she reached for him, his scarred cheek in her indelicate hand, and she kissed him in a way he didn’t deserve. She kissed him as if they were normal people in a normal house, and he hadn’t watched her die, and she worked nine-to-five at an office she hated, and on the weekends, they got takeout wings and watched sports. For a moment, they were safe, caught between this world and another, their reality tailored for comfort. An illusion, of course, but a good one, good enough to trick them both.

And why would he say such a thing again? He could tell himself that the day had been too bad to ever be ruined, but he wasn’t naive. No, he felt an unavoidability instead. This would only be a world in which he loved her. Had he chosen not to tell her, then he would’ve blamed the violence on his restraint. No, he wouldn’t have, but he wanted to lie to himself, wanted to feel that loving was a strength rather than a curse. He wanted to live in a world in which loving her didn’t burn down walls.

She squeezed his side, sighed against him.

“I know,” she said, trying to absolve him of his guilt.

* * *

When Joel and Tess found a place to sit in the church for the town meeting, they didn’t talk to their neighbors, didn’t eavesdrop on nearby conversations; the place kept a pin-drop silence, scarves and coats still on, everyone praying the meeting would end swiftly. Though there were questions drifting through town, he could sense that no one really wanted answers, for they all knew answers would give them nothing. Why did it matter by whom they’d been attacked when knowing would never bring back the dead? And why should they fear an additional attack now that the borders had been reinforced? In a world of survival, they required action for comfort, and information, even important information, paled in comparison. Yes, there was value in knowing why something awful had occurred, but sometimes, pain was pain and nothing more, no meaning to be found, no lesson to be learned. And no one wanted to invite in that kind of pain.

Maria in front of her audience, the same portrait as always. He thought of months ago, right before Christmas, the weekdays leading up to a drastic weekend snowstorm, and he and Tess had just found a Christmas tree before heading to the meeting, almost showing up late as a result. In January, he started calling that December their _honeymoon period,_ for they did things like impulsively go out for a Christmas tree before a town meeting, or show up late to their patrols because they woke up with other things on their minds, or kiss goodbye at the gardens even though they both hated public displays. Out of character, yes, but there was something novel about going against their own tastes and instincts. They wanted to try a different love on for size. Eventually, they calmed down, but that town meeting, that snowed-in weekend, having her beat him at chess, bumping into walls as they brought their mattress downstairs, he sat in this new meeting and missed those days so much that he felt an ache in his chest. They’d been happy. A kind of second chance, and they’d been happy. Laughing with her in bed at night, and he could see her smile in a greyscale, and she used to swear that she couldn’t sleep while touching, but she tended to be the one to encroach on his pillow, not the other way around. He missed holding her because he wanted to, not because he feared he would fall apart if he didn’t.

They already knew all of this information. A group, located somewhere north of Wyoming, and sources claimed that these people had taken residence in a university, where they most likely raised livestock and lived as a kind of military group. Based on eyewitness accounts, ten members of this group snuck past the guards using the darkness and camouflage clothing to hide themselves, and after detonating a bomb at one of the front gates, successfully destroying that wall, they infiltrated the settlement and first killed six people on guard duty, then six more who came when the emergency bells sounded. Though their motives remained unknown, all ten insurgents had been killed in the fight, and now, their bodies were buried in unmarked graves beyond the settlement’s walls. Items recovered from the bodies had been either inspected for leads or repurposed. 

He could tune this out, his hands folded on his lap, Tess’s hand resting over top of his. Though Maria didn’t go into detail about the recovered items, he could remember looking over each one at Maria and Tommy’s kitchen table, Tess and himself invited there after the funeral, a kind of reconnaissance. There was soup in the slow cooker and bread in the box on top of the fridge, did they want any? And each item had been lined up on the kitchen table as if they were at a museum, white gloves, a presentation, priceless artifacts, a symbol of something much bigger than the people sitting at this specific table. Black wool berets, a crochet pattern, the same beret worn by each of the insurgents, some kind of uniform. Otherwise, their clothes had been plain, not special and not matching either, practical camouflage that gave nothing of their origins away. But in one pocket on each body, a flattened piece of metal, and Tess had been the one to figure out that they were old bottle caps, hammered down to be flat but a kind of ribbing still left around the edges, and each one had initials etched onto the surface. A dog tag, or something resembling one, but these were singular, none to tear away when found on a fallen soldier. Though these two details felt small, inconsequential, Maria had managed to find out more information over the radio, other settlements mentioning those same hats. A group from somewhere up north, and they always traded wool. He hadn’t heard the part about the university campus, but he could understand the appeal of a place like that, sprawling like a barracks. He could understand housing a militia group in a place with plenty of beds.

And Maria should’ve ended with the context, the whole story as she now knew it. Tonight, no one wanted to be here, and no one wanted to talk about what had happened; no, they wanted to know that they were safe now, that the wall had been repaired and that all of the gunmen were now dead, and yes, maybe that was safety. Maybe dog tags made out of cola caps and hats that all matched were far more benign than the attack would lead the settlement to believe. And maybe they would be safe from now on, not because the walls were reinforced, not because they were on edge, but because God had witnessed their pain and chosen to keep them out of harm’s way, and everyone could hold steadfast to that belief as if it were solid, logical, visible and obvious. But no one had come here naive. No one had come here without blood on their hands. Maybe Maria could sense that unease, that specific discomfort of killers relieved by the deaths of other killers, and she made an impulsive decision. Or maybe she’d talked it over with Tommy beforehand, or maybe she’d mentioned it while Joel and Tess hadn’t been listening, or maybe she had a council that they didn’t know about. But when she spoke, she took him by surprise, and he felt Tess’s hand tense atop his. No, they hadn’t been warned.

“Per our bylaws,” Maria said, that same stoney jaw, expressionless face, mayoral through and through; at times like this, Joel wondered how his emotional, wavering brother could love her, “we need a vote of two-thirds majority to start an out-of-settlement investigation. I have unverified intelligence about a potential location, and the search party would consist of at least five people. Further details and chances to volunteer will be discussed at a later date, should we vote in favor.”

Tess’s hand against his, and they looked at each other, then at the room around them. Some of the families of the dead hadn’t shown up to this meeting, not wanting to know. Joel hadn’t read the town bylaws - Tess had, back when she was done dying in the infirmary and needed something to do - but he saw the pews, full for the sake of curiosity but empty for the sake of community, and he wondered if they had whatever they’d been able to call quorum. And did the quorum change after twelve deaths? According to Tess, the bylaws had been written by hand, and Maria had printed orderly along lines like textbook pages, like gradeschool notebook paper, and the prose had left something to be desired. When he met her gaze, she shook her head. No, they didn’t have a quorum.

“All in favor of an investigation,” Maria said, and she had the gall to sound uninterested, objective, as if this hadn’t been her own idea, “please raise your hand.”

He hadn’t been looking for Ellie. He swore he hadn’t. But she was impossible to miss, the way her hand shot up in the second row of pews, and she had Dina alongside her, Jesse’s girlfriend. When they buried Jesse, his parents had cried, and Tess had wiped sweat from her brow, exhausted from digging through frozen ground, and at the time, he’d thought about six more bodies, six more burials, and all he could do was stand there and look down at his hands and think of what he’d done, what he hadn’t done, what he currently couldn’t do. Now, with days of separation, he felt his heart pound at his own heartlessness, but what else could he have done? He had seen enough death already. He knew what was coming, and he knew that, more likely than not, it would be violent, but Jesse had been young, only a little older than Ellie. No matter what world they lived in, he had a hard time believing young people ever deserved to die.

In cautious succession, Dina’s hand came up second, and the room followed her example, tentative hands, some half-raised in hope, others half-raised in fear. And had they all had time to prepare an answer, they would be able to respond with nuance, with understanding, but instead, he watched as Ellie scanned the room, and before she could reach the pew he shared with Tess, he raised his hand against his better judgment, against what he knew to be true. Why launch an attack? There was no reason to seek these people out. Sometimes, harm came their way for reasons they couldn’t prevent. Everyone in this settlement had, at one point or another, been a bad person. Survival required sacrifice, and no one had gotten here, had found their way back to the life they’d once known, without inflicting pain in the process. And some mysteries were best left unsolved. Even if they found whoever had attacked them, they would never receive a sufficient answer, a good enough reason for why twelve people died on one terrible night, so they shouldn’t go looking. But Ellie wanted to go looking. She was loyal. He knew that she was loyal, so she wanted to go looking, and he wanted to go with her. No, he needed to go with her. _Want_ felt small compared to the thought of Ellie out there alone, trying to find the people who had killed her friend, not knowing what she would do once she found them. He needed to go with her, not because he believed in her cause but because he loved her, only because he loved her.

Though Tess’s hand followed his, she looked at him with discomfort, and he knew this would cause a fight later. No, not a fight, just a _conversation,_ and they would both be right for conflicting reasons, and no one would come out a winner. But there weren’t enough hands, not even half of the room, and they needed a two-thirds majority for an investigation. The vote did not pass, and they all lowered their hands. Had he been able to see Ellie’s face, he thought he would see her angry, but instead, all he could see was the back of her head. She must’ve cut her hair since she stayed with them in December, and she’d pulled it half back, just like Tess did. The last time he’d spoken to her, she’d been leaving his home after the big snowstorm in December, and he’d told her that she could come back anytime, okay? Not just during the storms. And she told him yeah, sure, but she didn’t sound sarcastic or joking, no, she sounded exhausted. She knew his door would always be open to her; she just didn’t want it to be.

The meeting ended like any other. Back in December, he and Tess had raced out of the church, had headed home to take the ornaments out of the attic and hunker down, and they had sex twice, once on the living room floor because they felt like being reckless and again upstairs in bed, and the next morning, Ellie said that she didn’t have enough wood for the weekend, could she borrow some of theirs? And Tess had said, _why don’t you stay with us until the storm ends?_ And she hadn’t put any thought into the question - she told him that later, told him that she hadn’t meant for the ask to be gargantuan - and she said it offhandedly enough that denying the invitation would create undue chaos. So Ellie said yes. 

When Tess nudged him, telling him to get up, he looked over at where Ellie and Dina had been sitting, but they were long gone now, and he didn’t want to know where they might be going.

* * *

Maria invited them over for dinner, and in the quiet fallout after the meeting, they didn’t know how to say no to her. And they didn’t know whose coping mechanism this was, breaking bread with family, a loaf of sourdough and tomato bisque, and his fingertips went red, and Tess’s foot nudged his under the table. Though they hadn’t talked on the way here, he knew that the last place she wanted to be was at Tommy and Maria’s dinner table, with Maria trying to make conversation. And the conversation needed to be about something else. She asked Tess about the gardens. She said she missed the basil from the summer, and though Tess’s shoulders looked tense, though her jaw was set in a way that showed the words she held back, she said she’d dried some, put it in an old glass shaker bottle. Sometimes, the neighbors brought over bread starter discard, and she and Joel would use that to make pizza dough, cooking half and freezing the other, sprinkles of dried basil put on top. Over the summer, she would look at the basil hanging on strings from their ceiling and wish she could take a picture, but she didn’t add that part for Maria; no, that was kept between herself and Joel, and when their eyes met, he heard that part of what she wasn’t saying, and some of the other parts too.

To their surprise, the front door opened. Sitting at the kitchen table, none of them could see the entryway, so Tess asked Maria if she’d been expecting company, and Maria shook her head. Then, he saw Ellie in the hallway, Ellie looking sleepless, aimless, her shoes still on. _This is a shoes-off house,_ Maria would always say. He could mentally fill that line in on her behalf. _Ellie, you know this is a shoes-off house._

“Hey,” Ellie said, hands in her pockets, tipping her chin up, staring Maria down. “Can we talk?”

He hadn’t seen Maria falter like this before. That was new. And disturbing too, Tess’s elbow bumping his, trying to look casual, trying to get his attention, but he wouldn’t look at her. No, not right. He couldn’t deal with her right now.

“We’re having dinner,” Maria managed. Then, she recovered, asked, “Would you like to join? There’s plenty to go around.”

“I’m good,” Ellie gave, then glanced toward the door, “and I have somewhere to be.”

Against his expectations, Maria nodded and stood up, excused herself from the table, led Ellie into the living room, her palm coming to the girl’s back. Had Maria stayed close with Ellie? They both could have such militant personalities sometimes, and had Ellie asked Maria what she thought of Joel’s choice, Maria would give an honest, and probably unflattering, answer. Maybe Ellie could trust Maria for exactly the reasons she couldn’t trust Joel.

And he knew what Ellie wanted. He knew what she would ask. And given that she was willing to be impolite, or maybe just given that he knew who she was as a person, he knew she wouldn’t take the inevitable _no_ as an answer. The next few days came into his mind, the image so clear: Ellie would rebel against Maria, and after tomorrow, he would never see Ellie alive again. Would she take one of the horses? And she would stock up on provisions, he imagined her breaking into his home and reaching for all of Tess’s canned goods, grabbing the leftover bread and pouring a container of dried beans into her pack and leaving them with nothing. And they wouldn’t even be mad. No, they wouldn’t, or if they were, then they would use that anger to follow her out, follow her as far as they could go, and the transistor radio clipped to his bag would start to go staticky, and Tess would tell him that they needed to turn back. Ellie had made her decision. Plainly, there was nothing they could do, but the truth was that he would do anything Ellie asked. If she wanted him to follow her on this revenge mission, he would. He would follow her in a heartbeat. It didn’t matter what he felt; if she wanted to do something reckless, then he would follow her, and he would do what he could to protect her, and he would still love her, no matter what she did. Did loving make him a worse person? He thought it might, but he didn’t know how not to love anymore. The flipside was worse, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

Tess nudged his foot under the table, of all times for her to read his mind. Even now, he could already hear her shouting back home, and she was right. Already, he knew that she was right. This wasn’t his battle to pick. Frankly, it wasn’t anyone’s, and the new wall stood at the edge of town, the wood bright and unworn and conspicuous, and there was no justice anymore. There was only surrender, and Tess understood that in its entirety; he was the one who needed to catch up.

His bowl was almost empty but not quite. Though he knew it was rude to eat while someone was away from the table, he tore off a corner of his slice of bread, brought it down into the soup. Tess looked at him inquisitively, and he faced away from her. She couldn’t change his mind, but he didn’t want her to know that yet. 

In the other room, Ellie raised her voice, and instinctively, he winced.


	24. Limits

She brought her hands to her face, cupping them around her mouth and exhaling, trying to warm up her fingers. This morning, her alarm went off before the sun rose, or maybe the sun wasn’t rising today, dim and overcast, snow to come but not much. With enough snow on the ground and clouds in the sky during the day, sometimes from dawn to dusk the world around them would remain the same color, a depressing monochrome, and it sure felt colder when the sun didn’t come out. Midway through February, he already longed for the winter to end.

Today, she marked the logbook. They had to walk a ways to the radio tower, wanting to keep the horses out of the wind, and when they mounted, Tess cowered her shoulders, trying to conserve warmth. If they had any choice in the matter, they would head down south, somewhere that stayed warm year round, and maybe they would find a place by the water too. Sometimes, he wondered if he would see the ocean again before he died. Did he want to? That was a hard question to answer. Yes, he did, but not enough to make the effort, not enough to warrant the sacrifice. But on cold days like today, the beach sounded like a dream, Tess lounging on a towel in the sand, the two of them alone in front of the ocean, just their bodies and the waves. And shells. He missed seashells.

They weren’t supposed to go to bed angry. He didn’t know where he’d heard that phrase, but he knew they weren’t supposed to do that. Still, he had lain in bed alongside her, the silence between them suffocating them both, and he wanted to say something but didn’t want to start a fight. And they hadn’t had a test like this since she returned, so there was a pretty good chance of failure, two tempers raging, and this time, she had another bedroom left open for her, and Kaya would even be happy to take her back. He didn’t know how to bring up the subject without making Tess upset, but then again, he already knew what she wanted from him and knew he couldn’t give her that, so why bring it up at all? Then, they would just be fighting over who was more stubborn, and neither of them would admit defeat.

“You haven’t talked all night,” he said quietly last night, their bedroom dark, their pillows not touching. After months of intense closeness, simply being at opposite sides of a mattress made them feel miles away.

She took a deep breath, stared up at their ceiling, hands folded over her stomach. 

“My first instinct is to be angry,” she said, sounding tired, “and I’m trying to change that.”

“You don’t need to.”

She nodded, mostly to herself. “Yeah, I do.”

“I don’t-“

“Stop,” she cut him off, closing her eyes in annoyance. “Just...leave it as it is.”

“We should talk.”

“Why?” she asked, looking toward him. “So I can talk you out of whatever you’ve come up with? Or so I can tell you that you’re right?”

He knew she didn’t think he was right. He’d known that long before she nudged him at Tommy and Maria’s table. If anything, he’d known her reaction before he'd even known his own.

“Goodnight, Joel,” she said, and to his surprise, there wasn’t malice. No, she turned onto her side, faced away from him, and accepted this as part of who he was. And he didn’t think she should accept it. Maybe he wanted her to be angry. Maybe her anger meant that what mattered to him mattered to her too. But he could hear her arguments already: Ellie was nineteen, Ellie needed to grow up, and Maria wouldn’t let that girl anywhere near the gates, so they had nothing to worry about. Maybe they were getting too old for their own stubbornness.

And riding home alongside her, no infected near the radio tower, the creek icing over in this weather, he wondered if she was still angry. Not angry, not her kind of anger, but a quiet discontent, understanding that she couldn’t stop him, not knowing if she would still be here when he returned. Should Ellie try to escape the settlement, he would go after her, and should Ellie campaign for a search party, he would volunteer to go with her. They wouldn’t even take horses. That way, Maria couldn’t refuse them. And he would have to leave Tess behind, but he’d left her behind once before. It was more likely, he thought, that Tess would forgive him than that Ellie would. When he came back, he might still find Tess in their home, preserves next to the laundry, her books on the shelves, that same crease left in their wedding picture. He wouldn’t even mind if she broke the frame again.

With the wind whipping hard, Tess cowered into her coat, her scarf pulled up over her face. For Christmas, Maria had given her a scarf, just grey wool, something simple, and he’d watched Tess open the gift, knowing that Maria meant this as an apology. _I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. Now, I will keep you warm._ But Tess simply thanked her - they gave Tommy and Maria a new cutting board to replace their torn-apart one in exchange - and he could see that all wasn’t forgiven, or maybe there was forgiveness, but this time, Tess didn’t want to let Maria back in. Still, she wore the scarf, hugged it close to her body as they rode through the winter winds. When the settlement finally came into view, he exhaled, his breath dragoning before him. Even in the morning, the security lights were on. He would’ve known that something terrible had happened here whether or not he’d witnessed those horrors. 

“Want breakfast?” she asked after they brought the horses into the barn, handed them off to a new stablehand. Victor was dead now. Never again would he put blankets on the horses for them, then berate Tess about something, almost anything. Rubbing her hands together, she tried to keep warm, and maybe this was an olive branch, and he would be an idiot not to take it.

He nodded, so they headed to the bar, maybe sandwiches, or maybe just anything hot. And ducking inside, he felt the thick, warm air come over them both - he held the door for her - and this early in the morning, the place didn’t smell like smoke, instead smelled like bacon and eggs and hot tea, and the barstools were empty, so they went to sit down, Tess’s pack hanging from a coat hook underneath the bar. Though Jesse’s parents usually worked here, the two of them being the best cooks in town, they were out for the day, maybe for the rest of the week, someone else filling in. What were they having? Tess looked at Joel, then said two plates of eggs and toast, and hash browns too, if that was alright. Did they have any bacon? Yeah, but that would be extra, and Tess said to add it, two servings. After digging the graves, they had an extra allotment for this month, but really, he wondered if she just wanted to bother Maria. But he wouldn’t mind bacon. Folding his hands on the bar, he wondered when he’d last had bacon, and maybe it had been a year, a whole year, and now, they were having an impulsive breakfast, and they could’ve just eaten at home or skipped the meal altogether, but no, they were having breakfast. Yes, this was an olive branch. Maybe he should apologize to her. No, he shouldn’t, for he didn’t think he had anything to apologize for.

Someone tapped Tess’s shoulder, and when she looked over, there was Kaya, and the two women embraced in an instant, Kaya’s long braid matching Tess’s, Kaya’s fingers digging into Tess’s jacket. They’d hugged like this in the graveyard after the funeral, a kind of lifeline. _Before I moved in,_ Tess told him later, _Victor lived in my bedroom there,_ and he wondered if that meant that Kaya and Cat and Tess even felt that Victor’s death was in some way their fault. If only he hadn’t moved closer to that gate. If only he hadn’t wanted to start a family with his girlfriend and therefore wanted more space. And the thoughts were useless, pointless, but they were thoughts had nonetheless, and Tess pulled away from Kaya, brought her palms to the woman’s biceps, and Tess asked, _how’re you doing?_ And they both knew better than to think that Kaya would tell the truth.

Bacon grease on his plate. He could soak it all up in buttery toast. Butter, they had so much butter here. Back when Ellie still cared about him, she told him about how those on farm duty would give children in the settlement glass jars of cream with marbles inside, and the kids could shake the jars until butter and buttermilk formed, the two separated and then packaged for the store in town. But Ellie was off of farm rotations now. Instead, she went on the paired patrols, just like himself and Tess, and she went with Dina most times, replacing Tess in that pair. Sometimes, Tommy joked that he missed being out there with Joel, but Tommy had always been a little more impulsive than Tess, and Tess was a better shot with a handgun. And she brought her fork through the bacon - he wondered when she last had meat like this, the blue house being strictly vegetarian - and she sighed in pleasure, but in relief too. Yes, this was a plate full of calories, wonderful hot calories that meant she would survive the winter, and after this, she would go to the gardens and harvest more calories, and thankfully, the greenhouses stayed warm all winter, and come lunchtime, she could duck into the cold house and make herself a sandwich, putting on fat in the cold. She was well-fed, sheltered, and safe, and she would continue to be safe if she hunkered down, kept to herself, and continued marking the logbooks on their patrols. If he could believe such a thing, he would, but he couldn’t. If Ellie asked him to leave, then he would go, for leaving would ensure that this place stayed safe.

He followed her home so that he could pick up his tools. Upstairs, she grabbed an extra pair of socks to layer over her current ones, and when she came back down to the entryway, he thought he should say something.

“I’m sorry,” he gave, the two of them lacing up their boots by the door.

She closed her eyes in contempt, shook her head as she pulled her laces tight.

“You’re not,” she said, “and I don’t want you to be.”

“Then what should I do?”

She gave him a look, trying to get him to drop the topic.

“I know you, Joel,” she said, standing up, “and I know that she’s your blind spot. At least think of ways to keep her out of the rabbit hole before following her down it.”

When she opened the front door, she held it for him. They would walk to the gardens together, and then, he could take his own route. Though she could, she wasn’t pushing him away, maybe to prove a point. _I am open to you,_ she didn’t say, _so whatever you choose will have nothing to do with me._

He followed her out, then closed the door behind them.

* * *

Midway through the week, they went to bed early, winter nights taking a toll. If the sun set early in the afternoon, why stay up late? And the curtains stayed open, and when the sun rose before her alarm sounded, they would wake in bright silence. She’d read a book about sleep, or maybe it was a book about something else, and she only told him the part about sleep, but apparently, other cultures would have two periods of sleep during the night, the time in between being used for cleaning, preparing for the next day, sex, whatever anyone could think of. So, why did they sleep through the night here? REM sleep, he knew the science only vaguely, so she filled in his gaps, and sure, there were benefits to an uninterrupted night, but she thought of, you know, just two quiet hours in the night, right? Two quiet hours, and they could do whatever they pleased, and no one would be asking them to do something else. _Want to try it sometime?_ she said, and because he could tell she didn’t really mean it, he said _no, I do not,_ making her laugh.

But he kept waking up midway through the night anyway. Maybe going to bed early had been a bad idea. Lying awake, he thought about nudging Tess, but she’d told him last week that she slept better next to him, and he couldn’t take that from her. _I sleep better next to you._ She could tell him she loved him, could marry him, could bring home vegetables for dinner and smile as she brought her ring back over her now-clean fingers, but when she told him that she slept better next to him, he felt like someone worth loving. And she curled up on her side, and a good night’s sleep was a rare commodity in this world, and through her shirt, he could see her vertebrae, seven cervical, twelve thoracic, and five lumbar, she’d taught him a way to remember those, thinking of work hours. In at seven, lunch at twelve, out by five, and each kind had a different shape, connecting to the neck or the ribs, and she liked when he ran his fingers up her spine, feeling the different ridges as he counted bones. 

She’d been far away since they last really talked. He couldn’t blame her, but he didn’t know how to bridge their gap either, so they stayed in awkward half-silence, the conversation stilted, their evenings together a pea-under-the-mattress kind of uncomfortable. Because she wouldn’t take an apology, he wasn’t sure what else he could do, and he knew he couldn’t make her see his side, and that he would never see hers either. He didn’t know how to navigate an unavoidable disagreement. _Irreconcilable differences,_ he thought, but this was one difference rather than many, and they both were willing to compromise. But he didn’t know how to meet her halfway when their versions of _halfway_ could never make a whole.

Outside, the world brightened, but it was too early for the sun to come up. Trying not to wake Tess, he sat up slowly, then brought his legs out from under the covers, the house cold around him. He went to the window, wondering if someone had gone out with a flashlight, but no, Ellie’s lights were on. What was she doing up? It was well past two in the morning. Had she just gotten home? Though he’d tried to keep an eye on her around town, she seemed to always duck out of view, and if she wanted to mourn in an ugly, rapturous way, then he understood why, but coming home at three on a weeknight was destructive. Then, he saw her door open, and she ducked outside in her coat, her backpack bulging, her hair tied back, and back when she still cared about him, he had to force her to wear a coat in the winter, needed to hide her canvas jacket so that she had no other option. Ellie hated dressing for the weather. He’d long ago given up trying to make her wear winter boots. And though she still wore those torn-up sneakers, she had a coat on this time. She didn’t bother locking the garage, didn’t look back as she headed away from the house. 

He could follow her. He could go outside right now. If he woke Tess up now, she wouldn’t mind, might even trust him more. And had she been awake, she would’ve insisted that they follow Ellie, would’ve sworn that this, _this_ was their time to intervene, and they couldn’t let the girl destroy herself. They needed to stop her. Of course, Ellie wouldn’t listen to anyone, but if there was anybody who could maybe make a dent, it was Joel and Tess together, and they needed to follow the girl. They needed to follow her and put an end to this rebellion.

Climbing back into bed, he heard Tess’s breathing change, half-awake and shifting as he pulled the blankets over his body. She sighed, turning over in bed, curling up close to him, her eyes still closed. Closing his own, he forced himself to relax.

If anyone asked, he would say he hadn’t seen a thing.

* * *

At some point in the winter, she started to associate root vegetables with pestilence, unrest, and even the cordyceps itself. If she ever saw another parsnip again, it would be too soon. And the greenhouses were so stuffy, so she went outside, the wind thankfully dying down, the sweat on her brow sticking to her forehead. Though she didn’t mind the length, she hated how heavy her hair was now, so long, the longest it had been since she was a child, and no matter how tightly she braided it, whether she pinned the braids around the crown of her head or even just tried a bun, she still felt weighed down. But Joel would botch cutting it, and she didn’t want to ask Maria, and, really, she’d grown attached. If she looked in the mirror and found her appearance similar to how it had been a year ago, she didn’t know how she would react. 

She could see her breath. Thank goodness it was the end of the week. She wanted lunch, but she didn’t feel like making something, and if she went out for a sandwich, she thought their extra rations might not even be enough to last them the month. Then again, maybe she should push their rations to the limits. Maybe she should eat steak every day next week and see what Maria had to say about it. She was still angry about the vote at the town meeting. Where had that vote come from? Though Joel seemed to think Maria had thought of putting together a search party, Tess had her doubts. No, someone must’ve asked, and she could point to exactly that someone, the person who had raised their hand first in the meeting. And Maria had only brought up the vote because she'd known it wouldn’t pass.

Had Ellie been another age, had the situation not been so cut-and-dry, maybe Tess could’ve had compassion, but Ellie was nineteen, and Tess remembered being nineteen. At nineteen, girls were old enough to think they were adults but young enough to still be impulsive and scared, and when she herself was impulsive and scared back then, she lashed out. She killed. She told people off and didn’t think she would live past the coming season and bargained even when she didn’t have the upper hand. And really, she shouldn’t be alive now. She couldn’t fit on both hands the number of times she should’ve died, but somehow, she was still alive, and that had to mean something, not because she felt a kind of divine power but because she didn’t have another option. Jump from a tall building, sure, but even then, she didn’t think she would die. She had no choice but to push forward. And she wished Ellie would take her word. She wished that she could talk to Ellie and have the girl listen to her. _I know what you’re feeling,_ she wished she could say, _but it’s only going to hurt you in the end._

Two nights ago, Ellie tried to break out, and of course Maria stopped her. Of course Maria had warned the guards at the gates. Maria had even put the girl back on the farm rotation, just to keep her inside the walls. But Tess knew plenty about nineteen-year-old girls who didn’t like being told the word _no_ ; if they wanted to get their way, then they would push and prod and even kill for their cause. Though she could try to convince Ellie that it was no use, that this was a stage of grief rather than a valiant cause, she knew that Ellie wouldn’t listen to her, either because she was an adult or because she was Tess, _fuck you, Tess,_ that Tess. And Joel loved the girl like a daughter, so he would follow her, would even help her escape, but Tess loved the girl as if she and Ellie were the same person, an opportunity to be on the outside looking in. And she had been a bad person. She knew that the things she had done had made the world worse, maybe irreconcilably so, and she wanted to spare Ellie that pain, for what was the point of pain if not to learn something? But some pain was just pain, and there was no way around feeling it, and nothing could soften its blow, but this pain, she thought she could spare Ellie from this pain. But really, could she? The truth was that she couldn’t, but she refused to accept that truth. And she could remember Ellie in the Capitol Building, and no, they wouldn’t just leave Tess; she would turn when she turned, and then, Joel would put a bullet through her skull, but she never turned. Ellie wouldn’t leave her behind. She ought to return the favor. 

“Hey,” someone said, making Tess jump, shaking her from her thoughts. “Sorry.”

Looking over, she found Dina standing in the snow, same jacket as always, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. In her gloved hands, she held two sandwiches wrapped in paper.

“Bringing someone lunch?” Tess asked, warming her hands in her pockets.

“Yeah,” Dina said, laughing uncomfortably. “You.”

Tess furrowed her brow. Since she’d gone back on paired patrols with Joel, she hadn’t seen Dina much, their sessions at the gym few and far between. Tess had heard about the breakup but only through talk around town, for Dina and Jesse had been on and off plenty of times, the rumors practically spreading themselves. Since then, Dina and Ellie had been inseparable, so Dina and Tess, of course, had stayed separate as a result.

When Dina held out a sandwich, Tess took the package cautiously. 

“I know you live close to here,” Dina gave, trying to act casual. “I thought we could talk.”

And there was only one possible subject, so Tess shook her head, pushed the sandwich back toward Dina.

“I’m not getting involved,” Tess said. “Whatever she’s planning, I don’t want to know about it.”

Looking confused, Dina asked, “What're you talking about?”

“I know she tried to break out,” Tess gave. “I won’t help you with that.”

“Oh,” Dina said, shaking her head. “No, it wasn’t about that.”

“Then what’s it about?”

“Just wanted to talk,” Dina gave, and she shifted awkwardly in front of Tess, thrown off. _Way to handle this,_ Tess thought, berating herself. 

“Yeah, okay,” Tess said, then took the sandwich back and nodded. “House’s cold, if you don’t mind.”

Dina shook her head.

“No big deal.”

Suddenly, the short walk from the gardens to the house felt infinite, and as they followed the path, Tess tried to think of a mutual topic but found none, at least none that were acceptable. Dungeons and Dragons? Jesse had been the Dungeon Master, whatever that meant, so Tess doubted Dina wanted to talk about the campaign. And neither of them had been to the gym in weeks. _More like months,_ Tess thought, for winter made her want to hunker down, conserve calories and keep warm, and plus, she moved back in after Thanksgiving, and she and Joel had been inseparable until at least mid-January. She didn’t have the energy or time. And Ellie, of course they could talk about Ellie, but they wouldn’t. Tess wondered how much Dina knew, how much Ellie willingly shared. Not much, she assumed, but Dina probably knew that Joel and Tess weren’t people Ellie cared about anymore, but Dina had gone out on patrols with Tess anyway. Had Ellie or Dina been uncomfortable with that pairing? And Jesse loomed over every topic, Tess remembered the rumors of a breakup a month ago, and it was amicable, as amicable as a fifth time could be, but he was gone now, and there was nowhere for Dina to put those feelings. Maybe that was why she wanted to talk.

“Thanks for this,” Tess said, shaking the sandwich and trying not to sound desperate, “but you should’ve let me pay.”

Dina furrowed her brow.

“Why?” Dina asked. “Surplus?”

“Trying to piss Maria off.”

At least that got Dina to laugh.

“Any reason why?” Dina asked. “Other than, you know, boredom. Or a bet.”

“None.” When Tess thought about the last time she and Maria sat down and talked, the _wishful thinking_ discussion, she still involuntarily made fists. “Just wanted to make her mad.”

“Would be a welcome change,” Dina said, and they were at the front steps. Did Tess have her keys? She hated locking the front door. “She’s been so nice lately. It gives me the creeps.”

Joel hadn’t locked up, thank goodness. Tess pushed the door open and hoped this wasn’t a mistake.

* * *

Over dinner, she thought they would be level-headed enough to make a decision. Though she’d thought about waiting until bedtime, she figured he would have the upper hand then, or he would overreact, or he would pretend he felt fine and then stay awake for hours on end, not knowing that his tossing and turning kept her up too. So, dinner. And then, they could continue the conversation as they washed dishes, or they could keep quiet, feeling as if they were in each other’s way. At least it would all be out in the open. At least she could say what she needed to say.

“I have an idea,” she said, pushing food around her plate. She really, seriously was starting to hate parsnips. 

He looked up at her, then went back to his food. No, he didn’t think she would budge.

“I want you to talk me out of it,” she said, and she really did. She wanted him to tell her she was wrong, to insist that she stay behind, to prove to her that this was between himself and Ellie, completely irrelevant to her. Though she wanted an argument as well, she mostly wanted leverage. She wanted a reason to think that one of them was wrong.

He shook his head, went back to his food. “Not sure I can do that.”

“Humor me.”

When she was a child, she assumed people wanted to do good in the world. She didn’t understand why anyone would deliberately break rules. And as she got older, she understood that people stole bread not to become rich but to feed the hungry, and she figured that handing in a paper a day late wasn’t an unforgivable sin, but what took her by greatest surprise was how deliberately unkind the people she met in college could be. There were no rules anymore. Everything from manners to basic decency to common sense went away, and instead, she found herself surrounded by people so selfish that even small interactions overwhelmed her. What was she supposed to do about her chronically drunk roommate? Once, the girl puked in her own clothes hamper, then didn’t clean it up for two days. And when Tess talked to her parents about all of this behavior, her parents said _that’s life,_ and Tess could picture her second grade classroom, a list of rules put up in ridiculous curlicue font. _Say only kind things. Include everyone. Put things away when you’re finished. Leave the world better than you found it._ And she wished she could hold that sign up for every other adult she met and scream that this, _this_ was what they should be doing, not because everyone should be a saint but because everyone should at least not deliberately be a fucking asshole.

And then, the world fell apart, and she was deliberately an asshole. At least she could lie and call it _survival instinct_. Back then, she resolved all conflicts not because she needed emotional closure but because a bad trade deal could mean a bullet in her skull. If she had enemies, then they were either short-term or dead, and she didn’t need to think about the feelings of others, for having feelings at all was a privilege in the QZ. And now, she had conflicts in Jackson, and she had started realizing that some conflicts never worked out. Sometimes, both parties were wrong, and though everyone could forgive, no one owed anyone else forgiveness. There could be people who hated her for good reasons here, and she couldn’t do anything to change their minds. And she wanted to know how to navigate this awkward dislike, wanted to understand how she could go on without apologizing, but didn’t holding back make her the selfish one? She didn’t want to be selfish, but she wasn’t sure how to cope with conflicts she couldn’t resolve. She wasn’t sure how to make right what no one else wanted to make right.

She knew with conviction that Ellie’s rebellion was teenage and futile. She had been that same girl once before. Though she knew that Ellie would beat her head against this specific wall again and again no matter what anyone said, Tess desperately wanted words to reach Ellie instead. Wasn’t there a way to convince the girl to let go? Though Tess wanted there to be another way, she had realized that there wasn’t one, and sometimes, truly loving someone meant inflicting pain on them, making them angry, pushing them away and yelling at them and insisting that they were wrong. She wanted to do this the easy way, but Ellie didn’t, so she needed something bigger. She needed something unkind.

And then there was Dina, but Tess wouldn’t tell Joel about that.

“Okay,” he gave. “Give me your best.”

Looking up at him, staring him down, she said, “I think we should volunteer."


	25. Damn Braid

When they got home, she closed the front door behind them, and though the house was dark, he saw in her eyes a kind of fire, one she wished would burn out. Of course, Maria had gotten defensive, had tried to talk them down and out, but if they went voluntarily, if they took nothing but a season’s provisions, if they didn’t bother with a horse and said they would be back by spring, then there was no reason to keep them here. Sure, the gardens would have one less green thumb, and someone else would need to fix leaking pipes, but in the grand scheme of things, Joel and Tess wouldn’t be missed.

They could leave this coming week. Had Ellie been home when they returned, they would’ve told her so. The girl wouldn’t be coming with them, of course not, but maybe this would quell her. And hopefully, she would champion her hatred for them over her want for revenge. Hopefully, Tess was right; if she and Joel went in search of this militia group, then Ellie would stay in Jackson, not even ask to tag along. 

But Tess had a fire in her eyes, and she left her pack by the door - she dropped it rather than set it down - and before he could lean over to take off his boots, before he could shed his coat, she took his face in her hands and kissed him, the fervor making him stumble back, and this wasn’t attraction. No, this was something more insidious, like quiet hatred that had brewed for weeks and just now came between them, and she wanted to purge these emotions from her body, push them into his if necessary. And maybe he wanted her pain. Maybe feeling her emotions instead of his own would calm him down. And he didn’t want to stop her, no, he wanted her to keep going, his hands coming to her hips, their bodies flush, and though she never let him wear boots past the entryway, she pushed him inside nonetheless, her fingers fumbling with the zip on his coat. When he slowed down, she nudged him up each one of the stairs, sometimes even pushed. Though he tried to reach out for her, take her in his arms and carry her the damned rest of the way, she forced his arms away, then undid the first button on his shirt, then the second, then the third. Trying one last time, he took her hands in his, slowing her down for just a moment, but she shook his hands away, then tore at his shirt, one of the buttons popping off as she did so. For a moment, he could feel her hot breath against the skin of his neck, and they stood half-stunned together on the top step while he thought of how she would be the one to see that button back on in the morning.

And she straddled him in bed while she still had all of her clothes on, even her boots. Though he wasn’t naked, he felt naked in comparison, his chest bare, only his underwear still on, and he watched as she lifted up the hem of her shirt, and her body didn’t surprise him anymore. He needed to find a word for what it did make him feel, taken-aback but in a remembered way, like coming home to a place he’d forgotten was breathtaking. And he reached out to touch her, his fingers coming to her side, but she pushed his hands down, pinning his wrists above his head, that intensity in her eyes telling him that she was in control tonight, and he would be best off not questioning her authority. He swallowed, arms stretched above him, and accepted his fate

The last time he saw her like this, they’d been up to their ears in ration cards, and the weather had shifted from summer to fall, the apartment getting less stuffy, the city not smelling as rancid. As she pulled off her bra, he could remember the last time with excruciating clarity, there had been running water, and the day had been cool enough for a hot shower to feel welcome, and they were _clean._ Clean for the first time in weeks, so of course they needed to sweat that away. They kept the windows open the whole time. Though he wasn’t sure he was remembering correctly, he pictured the scene with white sheets beneath their bodies, Tess naked above him, and at the time he assumed it was too much. He assumed that looking at her in the daylight - it was noon, and they were on cloud nine before she even started undressing him - would be too much, so he looked away, but she said no, it’s alright, her tone telling him the opposite. Maybe they had spent their time together halfway in love, asking little probing questions to see what _halfway_ meant to the other. And she wanted him to look, so he looked, and she’d been emaciated back then, not like women from before, and he could trace the outlines of each of her scars. He wanted to look away because he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to bear witness. Her body, the most sacred part of their stuffy apartment, and he rested on his back atop their pushed-together mattresses while her knees bracketed his hips, her fingers curling in the hair on his chest. Then, she told him she wanted to try something, and she untied her headband, pulled it out of her hair, and brought it over his eyes, giving him a blindfold. _Tell me if you want me to stop,_ she whispered in his ear, and the best part was that she wasn’t acting, wasn’t performing for him, the timbre of her voice natural and real. He knew he wouldn’t tell her to stop.

But she was angry now, and she wanted him to see that. He felt her grind against him, the seam of her jeans pressing against his underwear. She wanted to watch him writhe. And maybe he wanted to let her take him over, use him, leave him spent in bed while she headed over to the window of their QZ apartment and smoked one of the cigarettes Bill had slipped into a shipment. Maybe he wanted her to leave him as a husk of a person, and come dawn, if he was lucky enough, she would bring him something to eat and rub his shoulders until he regained his strength.

Their gazes met. He wasn’t sure they would get any sleep tonight.

* * *

In the morning, her side of the bed was empty, the covers pulled back, the bedroom door ajar. He leaned up on his forearms and stretched his neck, and with the curtains open, the bedroom grew bright, a stark contrast to the drabness of February so far. Looking out the windows, he saw snow, fat flakes falling, the kind of snow that could pile up quickly and without warning. Because they needed time to prepare, Maria had given them the week off of patrols, so they didn’t need to go anywhere, didn’t need to brave the blustery storm. And Tess must’ve been downstairs, and he thought he should join her. Though his joints ached as he stood up, he thought he should join her. But he should put on a sweater first, the house felt cold, and when he went into the closet, found that green sweater of his she always stole, he pulled the cuffs over his wrists only to find that he had circular bruises there, as if his hands had been strangled.

She was making pancakes. She had already gotten dressed. Standing in the kitchen doorway, he wondered when she’d put those on. He wondered why she’d picked their clothes up off of their bedroom floor, why she’d returned their boots to their places by the door. Though he wanted to know what she was thinking about, he actually didn’t want to know, and he watched her flip one pancake on the griddle over the stove, then flip the other, and she kept her back to him, and normally, he might care for her. Normally, she liked when he cared for her, coming up behind her in the kitchen, his hands on her waist, and though she would never admit it, she liked when he got possessive. When he knocked out someone’s kneecaps after a bad comment, when he pinned a guy down while she read the man to filth, she liked that, but today, he knew he should hold back. Though she knew he was in the kitchen, she kept her back to him, and he wasn’t sure what else to do but sit down at the little table by the window and wait for her next direction.

She served him a half stack, fingers at the edge of a white porcelain plate. Then, she sliced two pats of butter on top, her wrists tense, her face frozen, and this was a performance, but he didn’t know what kind. And honey slipping down over his breakfast, she dangled a silver spoon in the air, swirled her hand, and the world around them was pure white, hospital white, and she was the only color, and he wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

A fork, then a knife, and she headed out the door before he could start eating, before he could determine whether or not to thank her. He wasn’t sure that she’d eaten. He wasn’t sure what the gardens would do without her in this pivotal season. And this had been her idea, he needed to remind himself that this had been her idea, for otherwise, the guilt made him wince. Did he want pancakes? No, but he had a feeling that, should she return home to find any morsels remaining, his wrists wouldn’t be the only part of his body bruised. And maybe he wanted that. Maybe he wanted them both to be in pain, for then, they wouldn’t need to ask themselves hard questions. Maybe, in the end, she wasn’t angry with him at all.

They must’ve had buttermilk in the fridge. Though they had spare rations from helping with the burials, he knew that buttermilk and breakfasts at the Bison and the sandwiches Tess had ordered all week would put them over. And if he opened the fridge, he was sure he would find fine cuts of beef, a whole chicken, two cartons of eggs and more milk than the two of them could drink and maybe even greenhouse vegetables that someone other than Tess had harvested. When Maria balanced the books, she would say Joel and Tess couldn’t be allotted any food for March, the first ration-based transgression in the settlement’s history, and though any other pair would’ve made Maria raise an eyebrow, she would accept Joel and Tess going against her with ease. _This is a suicide mission,_ she’d said yesterday afternoon, and in a way, he thought that both he and Tess took that as a compliment. _There’s a good chance you won’t come back. What beyond these walls is worth that kind of sacrifice?_ The truth was that nothing beyond these walls was worth that sacrifice. To him, the dissonance felt like a summer breeze. He wondered if to Tess it felt instead like the winter winds outside.

He wasn’t hungry toward the end of the meal, but he forced it down anyway, then did the dishes for good measure. She’d put his boots back by the door as well. He wondered if she would start speaking to him again when she returned home, or if they would carry on in this tense but welcome silence. He wondered if he would mind the quiet at all.

Outside, the snow was falling harder. They would leave in the worst circumstances possible, but they were still leaving. He chose not to think about what kind of people that made them.

* * *

The steps in front of the blue house iced up in the winter. She hadn’t lived there long enough to know that, so she slipped on the top one, had to lean against the door to regain her balance.

Kaya’s groceries, the same trip as always, and because they were in the awful season between last year’s harvest and this year’s, the basket was only half-full. At least Kaya liked parsnips. Tess had thought about chopping up the milder radishes they had left, trying to roast those in the oven, pretending they were potatoes, but at some point, she needed to admit defeat and go for the bread, the preserves, the meat they had in the freezer. Strangely enough, she thought about food less back when it was scarce, and now, she had to portion it out, remember what sprouted when, and decide what to make for dinner. In a way, she missed when Joel wanted to eat cold canned ham, for they didn’t have to care whether or not something was good, just needed to care about the calories and whether or not the food would make them feel full.

She knocked twice. As always, Kaya was expecting her, so the door opened quickly, and Kaya ushered her inside, _come in quick, you’re letting all the heat out._ In the kitchen, there was a wood stove, one Tess had never lit, and Kaya took the basket, carried it into the kitchen while Tess unlaced her boots, took off her coat, hung the scarf Maria had made her on a hook by the door. Had she not already told Kaya that story, maybe she would’ve had fodder for today, but instead, she was out of talking points, and when Kaya inevitably asked _how are things,_ Tess would be silent. She couldn’t tell Kaya about what she and Joel planned to do, for they weren’t supposed to tell anyone anything, Maria forcing them into secrecy. No, this was not an official search party; though the settlement wouldn’t send scouts, Maria technically couldn’t control what two people voluntarily did, and she could pretend to look the other way when they took extra dry rations and went on an impulsive vacation. If anyone asked where Tess and Joel had gone, Maria could simply shrug and say she didn’t know, but they would hopefully be back soon.

“This is heavier than usual,” Kaya said, pulling the produce from the basket and storing it in all the spots Tess remembered. “Dismal, but heavier.”

“Figured you could use some extra,” Tess said, leaning against the jamb of the kitchen doorway.

Kaya gave her a look.

“Still fighting with Maria?” Kaya said, shaking her head as she opened the fridge, put the greenhouse lettuce inside. “Might as well bury the hatchet sometime this century.”

Tess gave her a look, said, “You’re more fun when you’re drunk.”

“I’m just saying, it’s been months. Almost a year. Maybe actually an entire year.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Hasn’t she apologized?”

“She made me a scarf,” Tess said, nodding toward the hooks by the door.

“In Maria-speak, that’s more than an apology.”

With the basket empty, Kaya headed to the doorway, then slid past Tess and motioned toward the couch. All things considered, Tess had time, so she joined Kaya and sat down. Now that Tess didn’t live here anymore, the windowseats near the front of the house looked so empty, only Cat’s few potted plants remaining there. 

“Yes, and I wear it. Not sure what else I’m supposed to do.”

Kaya tugged on the shoulder of Tess’s sweater. “She made this, didn’t she?”

Nodding, Tess said, “Gave it to me my first autumn here.”

Back then, Tess and Joel had only been in their new home for a few nights, the cleanup finally done, the windows kept open to air the place out. She hadn’t known what to do about the many horse pictures, and at the time, they’d thought Ellie might stay for a while, so the workshop had a bed in it, the one that eventually ended up in the garage. And the bedroom Tess and Joel shared, the walls had been bare, and she kept her knife on her bedside table, and their few clothes were pushed to opposite ends of the closet. She must’ve stared that bed down for hours, true hours, a few minutes each eventually adding up, for it was one thing to sleep in the same bed while they stayed in Tommy and Maria’s guest room, but it was another to move into a house together and choose to sleep in one bed. That choice would only ever be deliberate, and neither of them could take that choice back. She’d wished she could figure out what was on his mind, if he felt uncomfortable by that prospect, so that she could make certain choices. If he wanted to be alone, then she would let him be alone, but she wasn’t even sure if she herself wanted to be alone. And then, one bed for two people, and Ellie didn’t really want to be in the other bedroom, but she stayed there nonetheless, the garage still needing work. Tess hadn’t eaten much at dinner that first night in the house, for she’d known they would have to share a bed later, and she didn’t know what to think or feel.

And maybe that was why she wanted to follow him on a quest neither of them truly believed in: she missed caring about something more than whether or not a man wanted to share a bed with her. She missed hot blood and infections and starving in the winter, missed the QZ power being cut and having to huddle for warmth, missed bullet holes in her old coat and learning what shipments Bill would have in next month and trying her best to salvage an old can of beans, their only food for this weekend. Survival was easier, for she never had to think about why she wanted to survive, only that she could keep herself alive in these hard times and that she could continue living in the same way for as long as she had to. And Joel was steadfast alongside her, stoic and dark, endlessly pained and violent, and she could count on him, and he could count on her in return. Though she didn’t miss the awkward nights, the times when he retreated into himself and pushed her away, the times when he told her he wanted to be left alone and then jeopardized their deals, she missed the exhilaration of reaching for him out of need, divine need, like water and shelter and air. She missed when he would push her out of the line of fire. She missed when she could put a bullet in the skull of someone who had given him a black eye. And she could bring him vegetables from the gardens now, and he could put pipes in their bathroom so that they didn’t need to boil water and use buckets in order to shower, but those gestures would never feel as romantic as killing for one another. She wondered if that was why movies and books had been so important to people in the old times; a good life was a boring life, and it was better to watch made-up people sacrifice themselves than it was to be the person making that sacrifice. But she had made those sacrifices already. Part of her longed to make them again.

Maria had given Tess the sweater on one of their first few nights in the house. Tess could still remember the other woman knocking on the front door, what a strange sound, someone knocking on a door, and she would go over to the door and say _hello, would you like to come in?_ She felt as if she were playing house, back to her childhood roots, inviting a friend in for mud pies. And Maria handed her the sweater, folded all prim and proper, and told her that there was a knot in the yarn on the backside of the sweater, where a label otherwise would go. _The front and back look similar,_ Maria said, _so I put a knot there to keep you from wearing it backwards._ And the neckline came in tightly enough that, when Tess tried the sweater on for size, the bitemark remained hidden.

“That’s, what, four scarves of time?” Kaya said, rubbing Tess’s shoulder. “Maybe five.”

“Wouldn’t know,” Tess gave. 

“It’s a lot of work,” Kaya said. “Wonder what she’d been apologizing for.”

Tess furrowed her brow. No, the sweater had been a gesture of good faith, for Tess hadn’t had any winter clothing at the time. And though Maria would put a scarf’s worth of effort into an apology, Tess doubted she would put a sweater’s worth into one. 

“You’d tell me if something was wrong,” Kaya said, “right?”

Tess nodded, not sure if she was lying.

“Because it feels like something’s wrong.”

Sighing, Tess gave, “Nothing that’s not normal.”

“I heard Ellie tried to make a break for it.”

“Do you want to gossip, or are you concerned?”

“I just don’t want you to leave yet.”

Tess quirked a lip. 

“Then you’ll have to do better than that.”

“You’re just full of grudges,” Kaya said, mostly in jest. “It’s, like, ten percent soil science, ten percent hand-to-hand combat, and the rest is just grudges.”

Tess rolled her eyes. That wasn’t exactly wrong.

“She’ll settle down at some point,” Kaya said, halfway-comforting. “It’s just being a teenage girl. Everything feels so immediate. I’m sure you remember.”

“Of course I do.”

“And you think that everything is the end of the world,” Kaya said, “and you’re sure that you’re important, and then, you grow up, and either it’s all bullshit, or it just didn’t matter in the end. Give her a year or two, and she’ll come around.”

But Tess and Joel didn’t have a year or two. At some point, Ellie would find a way around Maria’s carefully set traps, probably sooner rather than later, and then what would happen? Ellie traveling alone to Montana, Ellie demanding a reason, Ellie searching for answers that didn’t exist, and she could die in the process, could go missing and leave all those who loved her not knowing. Tess could already imagine the conversations, Joel cold next to her in bed, the lights out, the town around them darker than usual, and he only admitted to his faults in the dark. He only told her that he’d been wrong when she couldn’t see him clearly. And this time, he wanted to know how she’d done it, how she’d accepted that she would never see her family again, how they could be alive now but still never reunite with her. If she had an answer, she would tell him, but she didn’t have an answer, at least not one she could put into words. Sometimes, she imagined her brothers elsewhere, homesteading with their now-adult children, thinking of her from time to time, their dead little sister, nineteen and so very different when they last saw her. If they were gone now, then they were gone, but if they weren’t, then at least someone in this world remembered her as terrifyingly impulsive, hardworking to a fault, naive and girlish and excited to have her driver’s license and buying scratchers so that maybe she could study abroad. To Joel, she was stubborn, good with a gun, sweet-talking and slick but kind too in ways he hadn’t expected, but at least someone remembered the person she’d been before. And maybe Ellie would be somewhere else, or maybe she would be stuck and helpless, or maybe she would be dead, her body rotting in the woods, on the sidewalk, in a pile with other bodies, and none of that would comfort Joel. Nothing would comfort Joel. And maybe Ellie could inflict that pain upon him not because she truly hated him but because she didn’t understand that she had that power over him, but Tess wouldn’t let her. Tess had been that teenage girl before. She knew better than to let a girl like that express her wrath.

“You’re suspiciously quiet,” Kaya said, taking Tess back from her thoughts. “Something’s up.”

Tess sighed. “Nothing’s up.”

“What did your husband do this time?”

Involuntarily, Tess laughed, almost snorting. What _did_ Joel do? She’d watched the bruises on his wrists form, then start to fade away as days passed. He hadn’t done much of anything; that was the point.

“Now look who’s holding a grudge,” Tess said, shaking her head.

“He’s still on my shit list.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure.”

“But things are alright?”

“Yeah, things are alright.”

And maybe that was why she didn’t fear leaving this week. Maybe this place had made her complacent, almost glamorizing this new world of hers. And then, a bomb at one of the walls, and no, they weren’t in some _new world,_ this was just the same old one, the same world with the assholes on the news and wars in distant countries and the plague, this specific plague, the infected sometimes acting more rationally than the uninfected. There wasn’t beauty here. Yes, she should look at the skyline in the spring, pink clouds as the sun began to set, snow-capped mountains on the horizon, and there was something enchanting about this place, something real, but that reality felt fleeting and temporary, as if the mountains would topple next season, and she really needed to make the most. And maybe she wanted to be the one to tear down those mountains. Sometimes, when things were alright, she wanted to destroy everything good just to prove that it had been real at all. Why was that? Pain felt real, and comfort felt fleeting. She didn’t know how to reconcile the two.

“Your hair’s so long,” Kaya said, pulling the end of Tess’s braid. “Never seen you with it long like this.”

Joel hated the braid, though he would never actually admit that. Sometimes, she would watch as he buttoned up one of his shirts, and then, he would pause, staring down for a moment, before picking a few long hairs off of the shirt, almost daintily pulling them off. If any of her hair got on his pillow - she didn’t wear it in a braid at night, and maybe he hated that more - then he would push her hair over until it was all on her pillow instead. And, really, she wanted to cut it. Whenever she had to tie it back - or whenever she had to let it dry - she longed to take a pair of scissors or even a knife to her hair and saw through what she could, but she would make a mess of it, and though she didn’t care much about her appearance, she hated when her hair looked awful. She could ask Joel to cut it for her, but she doubted he would do any better a job, and Kaya, whose hair hadn’t been cut in the last decade, wouldn’t be much help either. And avoiding Maria would force Tess to admit that this grudge of hers held her back, and she didn’t want to admit that, at least not yet.

“It’s annoying,” Tess said, not technically lying.

“Then cut it,” Kaya gave. “It’ll only get worse come spring.”

There was a halo of dread around this spring. Tess didn’t know what her life would look like then. Any other year, she would know that spring was the intense season in the gardens, staying home late, the days growing longer but her end-of-day still coming when the sun set, and her shoulders would ache from the work, and the only salvation would come as they were on the cusp of summer, and Joel would open all of the windows in their home, then bring his hands to her shoulders, massage her sore muscles. But this spring, she didn’t know where she would be. If she told herself the truth, then she didn’t know if she would be alive, and she hardly believed in the cause she was fighting for anyway. She wanted the winter to last another month, then another, then another.

“Okay,” Tess said, not seeing another option.

* * *

He’d been practicing “Dust in the Wind” in the living room when she came home at the end of their last day in the settlement. Boots off by the door, he could hear her pull her laces out of their knots, and her pack thumped to the floor, and they would have to put all of the provisions into their bags, secure a tarp and their sleeping bags to each pack. Neither of them had the proper gear for a long trip, especially not one in the winter, but they had ropes and carabiners, could make do. And he wouldn’t be able to play again for a long time, so he needed to get his kicks out now. 

“Hey,” he called out to her, fingers resting on the frets, and she leaned in the doorjamb, looking down at his hands. She was wearing one of his shirts, the tails tied and then tucked in, and he figured that cardigan must’ve been Kaya’s, given that she’d moved back in with it. And those were definitely his socks. 

Her hair was shorter. No more braid. She came over to him, her footsteps soft, and when she took the guitar from him, he let her, then watched as she set it down gently on the couch, away from where he sat. Coming to sit on his lap, she rested her palms on his chest, the ends of her hair falling forward.

“You cut your hair,” he said, holding the ends between his thumb and forefinger. Back to its original length, the way she’d looked when they first met, the way she always looked. No more long braid, her fingers deftly weaving it all into place each morning. 

She rubbed her thumb against the back of his neck. He didn’t know her intentions, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know them either.

“Maria cut it,” Tess gave, then brought her hands behind her head, undoing the half-up bun, leaving the elastic on her wrist. “I have the whole braid in my backpack. Not sure what to do with it.”

He furrowed his brow. What did one do with old hair? When they trimmed each other's, they just brushed the bits leftover into the grass outside, but maybe ten inches of her hair, what were they supposed to do with that?

But he didn’t miss the braid. No, he didn’t miss the braid at all, and as she fingered the tie on her headband, took it out of her hair, he looked at her and saw her as someone younger, someone both more and less naive, someone who scoffed when Maria assigned her to the gardens, someone for whom he felt complicated feelings. During their job smuggling Ellie, she’d said she wanted to take it easy for a while, and now, they could finally take it easy. The big, white house, porch and everything, and a bed fit for two people, a bed made for adults, and, really, he wouldn’t mind sleeping on the couch if that was where she wanted him, but the couch wasn’t where he personally wanted to be. He’d grown drunk in Tommy and Maria’s guest room. After a long day of clearing out the house that would be theirs, after searching for better clothes and praying the other kids would like Ellie, he came home to a place with other people, the living room claimed as Ellie’s domain, Maria and Tommy doing their best to make their house feel like a home. And upstairs, Joel shared the guest room with Tess, and thank goodness they had no other option. He slept better next to her. He couldn’t deny it any longer. Unless he wanted to spend the night tossing and turning, he needed to sleep next to her.

She held out her headband in front of them both. Reaching down, he cradled one of her wrists in his hand, the bruises on his own wrists having turned yellow. He thought he understood what she wanted to do; he hoped she understood that he was giving her permission.

Her headband, covering his eyes again, and she tied a knot to keep it secure. Though he could see edges of light coming in, he couldn’t see her anymore, instead felt her weight on his lap, her fingers joining with his. And she lifted their hands together, then pressed his hands against the button band of her shirt. The first one at the top, take it between his fingers, undo the button. Had he been able to see, he wouldn’t have been so clumsy, but maybe she wanted him clumsy. When he reached the second button, she took her hands away, rested them against his stomach while he felt his way down, the tips of his fingers finding each button, her chest rising and falling against his touch. Without looking, he could still slip her shirt off of her shoulders, still bring his fingers beneath the straps of her bra, and she leaned down to kiss him, gentle, almost teasing if she didn’t seem so earnest. She didn’t want to give him bruises tonight. Maybe she didn’t know yet what she wanted to give him instead.

His thumb against her taut stomach, her body warm and looming above his, he found her by touch, the muscles in her back, the dip of her collarbone. Even if she uncovered his face, he imagined he would keep his eyes closed, mapping her body in this way instead. A scar on her arm, they were in a shootout over some trade deal, he couldn’t remember why the scuffle had started but could remember ducking behind a dumpster with her and watching her reload as her ripped shirt soaked up blood. When she was sixteen, she and her friends tried to pierce their navels during a sleepover, and it went poorly - of course it went poorly - and she still had the little dimple of a scar there, a story it'd taken him years and years to learn, the soft parts of her body, the parts holding vital organs, the parts she guarded most diligently. Her neck - he found the muscles there, the way they moved when she swallowed, and he kissed her there, kissing blindly, his senses overwhelmed with her, the sensation of her heartbeat beneath his lips making him exhale - he had watched her look over her shoulder and stare at him over and over again. Sometimes, she would berate him, ask him what was taking so long, and other times, she would shift awkwardly, then bark at him to stop staring. 

His fingertips along her vertebrae, and this time, he could tell which one each was, counting his way up her spine, and everything around them, this whole settlement, their house with its marble counters and grownup bed and workshop full of their things, was merely an illusion. They both knew that none of this was truly real. Though they pretended they were safe inside these walls, they’d always known they weren’t, and then, the walls were breached. No, they weren’t safe here. Why had they ever thought they were? Sacrum, then five lumbar vertebrae, his fingertips skirted their edges like frets on his guitar, the small of her back beneath his palm, their chests so close. None of this was real, and when they did find a place they deemed real, they saw horror, they saw cults who killed on sight, they saw bombs and infected and entire cities gone and frozen corpses just beyond the Zone’s walls, uninfected people who could’ve been let it and given shelter had FEDRA given a damn. Though they gave in to the illusion, they didn’t lie to themselves or to each other. They knew what was real and what wasn’t.

But this past winter - or, really, the winter would still be there for weeks to come, but he thought of December as its own season - the fireplace roared, and he put on a Patsy Cline record, and back then, it had been novel to crack a can of preserves and bake bread to put them on. Sometimes, he would catch her singing along to the record, not really singing but doing something more than a hum, and he would hide from her, stay in the hallway outside of the kitchen while she kneaded, and watch from afar. Her voice then, the way her arms moved, it was all real. Not a performance, not an illusion, just her voice and her hands, and he wanted to bear witness. He wanted to remember that not everything true was terrifying. No, there was some good left in this world, and from her proximity to it, she turned their kitchen real, the marble countertops starting to shimmer, the light from the fire casting her in a warm glow. Though he wanted to join her, he didn’t want to ruin the scene, so he stayed back and watched, and when the record fell into another song, he walked in casually, and she looked happy to see him. And that was real too.

She brought her hands behind his head, untying the blindfold, and when he opened his eyes, he found her face shadowed, her jaw relaxed but her brow furrowed. Though she wouldn’t tell him what, she had something on her mind, something she couldn’t shake. She stood up, one of her hands holding her headband and the other reaching out for him, and this time, she didn’t have to force him up the stairs. No, he wanted to follow her. She could lead him anywhere, and he would follow her, for wherever she went would be real.

When he wanted to follow Ellie, he’d known that Tess would be left behind, maybe even pulling him back, but now, he wasn’t sure who was leading anymore, and he wasn’t sure that either of them had chosen to leave just for Ellie’s sake. And he didn’t want to understand their motives. He didn’t want to think deeply about the walls around them, the house they called a home or the fading bruises on his wrists or a cut braid in a backpack, something strange and useless, something they didn’t know what to do with. No, he followed as she sat down on the bed, and he wanted to think about her, the anger within her, the fear that masked itself as contempt, the intensity. He wanted to think about her body, the stories it told, the lies it refused to indulge, and he wanted to run his hands through her hair, shorter now, the length it used to be, the length he’d always thought best suited her. There were plenty of illusions to indulge, but in all of his, she stood in a halo of reality, something unflattering, something uncomfortable. He didn’t want to let the truth of her go.

In their bedroom, she brought his fingers to the band of her bra. She wanted him to touch her, so he touched her, pulled her bra over her head, undid the button on her jeans. This time, he was clothed while she sat naked before him, and as she lay back on the bed, arms outstretched, he saw her letting him take control. But did he really want that control? He remembered her hands fervently pulling at his belt, trying to get the buckle undone; his own fingers felt mindless and feeble in comparison, and he hated to keep her waiting. With moonlight reflecting off of the snow outside, he could see her in greyscale, the curve of her hipbones, the muscles in her arms, her body begging to be touched. And he loomed above her in bed, not sure how to take the lead, almost wishing she would turn him over and force him down and tell him what she wanted, but no, he knew what she wanted, and she wanted to be touched. His hand between her legs, her knee rubbing against his hip, and they were going to embark on a suicide mission. They may never sleep in this bed again, but still, they didn’t want to sleep tonight. No, she splayed her fingers across his back and pulled him closer, then whispered to him that she wanted him inside her, and she wasn’t performing, wasn’t bringing her voice to that timbre in order to make him aroused. No, she wanted him inside her, so he wanted to be inside her.

She wouldn’t crack open the window and then smoke a cigarette afterward. No, this time was different, and she felt so familiar, almost predictable, reliable in every intricacy. There wasn’t a life for him without her. No, that sounded wrong, but it was true, wasn’t it? She tethered him to what was real. She pointed out his flaws and said the things he was afraid to, and without her to balance him out, he didn’t know what kind of person he would be. And how would she be different without him? _Scared,_ he thought, her body so warm against his, her fingernails pressing half-moons into the skin on his back. Without him, she would be scared.

And he didn’t see Ellie’s lights come on, then go back off again. He didn’t hear her knocking on their front door, then waiting a moment, her hands warming up in the pockets of her jacket, her breath visible in the cold. Maria had scared Ellie. Well, not _scared_ , but it had been cryptic, that awkward double-speak, the kind that meant adults weren’t telling her the truth, and she was so fucking sick of that. She hated when people evaded the truth. She hated when she brought up an uncomfortable topic and watched every adult in the room hesitate, look at her as if she was a spoiled child, misbehaving in public, being too loud, crying at the wrong time. But she wasn’t wrong for asking. No, these people should’ve been asking the questions in the first place. Why wasn’t everyone else angry? She knocked again, and the living room lights were on, so they had to be home. A while ago, she’d heard guitar music, that muffled sound, and sometimes, she would hear chords distantly, the garage close enough to the sound, and she would take out her headphones and listen. Mostly just vibrations, she couldn’t hear the songs or figure out what chords he was playing, but he was playing something nonetheless. Since Salt Lake City, she hadn’t picked up her guitar at all, and she didn’t want to play, but she missed the music. She missed when she and Dina found the organ in an old church beyond the walls, their patrol route quiet enough for Dina to dare touch one of the keys. Pipe organs, huge-ass instruments, and they made a sound that made sense in a church. Though the organ looked similar enough to a piano, Dina only played errant keys, not trying to make a song. _Play that one,_ Ellie said, thinking of the two-finger song, the easy one, but Dina shook her head. _Just doesn’t feel right._

Joel was a liar. She wasn’t sure why it had taken her so long to figure that out. And she’d never really believed his halfway explanations of Salt Lake City, but still, she never thought of him as a liar. No, he was just Joel, and then, she found out the truth, so he was a liar. If she wanted to, she could piece together countless times when he made something up to keep her quiet, so many different topics deferred, and she couldn’t expect the truth from him, not ever. She couldn’t expect him to be genuine. But she’d heard Tess and Joel fighting, and eventually, Tess moved in with Cat and Cat’s mom and Eugene, and Joel kept playing the radio in the evenings. Asshole kept his windows open, so Ellie couldn’t _not_ hear it, and by the end of the summer, she knew who Willie Nelson was, and that Joel thought he was godlike, and also that Joel was depressed. Even though he never sang along, he sometimes would say _yes_ or _nice_ if he liked what was coming up next, and the DJ would do callbacks during mic breaks, so she would write down those songs, just for reference. Actually, he did sing along one time. He’d seemed happier at that point, sometime in the fall. _I saw a werewolf drinkin’ a pina colada at Trader Vic’s. His hair was perfect._

At some point, Tess came back. Ellie didn’t know when; suddenly, she just saw the two of them walking home together, to this home, and they weren’t yelling at each other anymore. And the timing was a little too convenient, all things considered. Had Tess left Joel before Salt Lake City, or had Tess left him well into the summer of that year, Ellie could’ve given a million different reasons as to why. She still didn’t understand the whole _wedding_ thing, so if those two realized that they actually hated each other, then she wouldn’t be surprised. But it was as if Tess too had realized that he was a liar, right at the same time, and Ellie didn’t feel for her, no, that would be weird, but Tess had gone back to him, and Tess didn’t lie. Evade the truth a little, sure, but Tess didn’t lie. And Maria said _go talk to them,_ something unspoken left beneath her words, and Ellie didn’t know what to do. Was something wrong? Normally, she would brush Maria off, but Maria had seemed genuine, a little darker than usual, concerned in a way that didn’t feel overbearing. _Please go talk to them,_ she seemed to ask. _Please talk to them before it’s too late._

But they didn’t hear her knocking. Maybe they’d gone to bed, or they were out at the bar, and she didn’t care enough to go looking. Maria was probably just goading her, trying to make her do things she didn’t want to do. And Ellie could eventually make her way out of here. She could find her way out even if Maria blocked the conventional paths. All she needed was some time to think, and then, she would figure it out. Dina wanted to come too. The words echoed in Ellie’s mind: _if you go, then I go._ And they would go eventually. Walking down the porch steps, she headed back to the garage. They would go eventually, and she wondered if they would even bother coming back. 

When Ellie turned her lights back on, Joel and Tess didn’t notice.


End file.
